


shade the more, ray the less

by mayfriend



Series: she walks in beauty [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Genderswap, Girl-Who-Lived, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Puberty, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-03-03 15:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13344351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: Harry stepped to the front of the queue. She gritted her teeth as the sand morphed and transformed. She couldn’t think of what shape the boggart would take, but when it stopped, she suddenly realised that there was no other shape it could have been.Tom Riddle stood before her, scarlet eyed, still in his Slytherin uniform with his prefect badge. In his hand was a small, black book that Harry knew by sight. “Harriet Potter,” he said her name clearly, and he smiled, but his eyes were cold and dead.Harriet Potter had almost allowed herself to be optimistic about her third year at Hogwarts. Almost. But then, she remembered her track record, and right on schedule, she learns an escaped convict is hunting her down, and that soulmates are not as cut and dry a business as she once thought.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are again, with my planned one-shot series not being a one-shot. I'd give up and just call it a long-chapter series, but that would be letting this monster of a story win. 
> 
> There's plenty of changes in this chapter to POA, and the main focus is just on the Trio and settling into Hogwarts, as well as some other changes ( _cough_ PUBERTY _cough_ ) that have started due to, you know, growing up. HP is more than anything else a coming-of-age series disguised as a mystery series disguised as a supernatural boarding school series. And thus, you get to read all about the horrors of periods, even if you have never, and will never, experience them in real life. 
> 
> If you have any questions (or ideas!) about 3rd year, please, please comment - I got a few apologies on _that tender light_ for long reviews which, let me tell you now, are so unnecessary. My entire day improves with every review I get, particularly when they're discussing the chapter or critiquing. Updates will probably be slower than usual with this series, simply because I'm about to do my mock exams in a few weeks, and then my A2s in June. And then, with any luck, uni. Yikes.
> 
> I hope you all like it!

Harriet Potter was a highly unusual girl.

For one thing, she hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year. For another, her soulmate was five decades her elder, and her parent’s murderer. Thirdly, she was a witch - she could brew potions, summon objects, turn matchsticks into needles - although unfortunately didn’t yet know how to turn her cousin into a frog.

Perhaps because she had been told all her life by her aunt and uncle that she was an abnormal, _strange_ kind of girl, she wasn’t quite expecting it when a perfectly normal thing that happened to perfectly normal girls happened to her.

Whatever the reason, when Harry woke up one morning into the summer holidays, stomach twisting uncomfortably, she was not expecting to peel back her covers to find herself lying in a pool of her own blood. For a moment, she wondered if she was dying. She wondered if she’d had some kind of catastrophic internal injury caused by knocking herself on the dining room table when Uncle Vernon had backhanded her in the ribs, or when Dudley had barged past her in the landing and slammed her into the banister at the top of the stairs.

But then, her mind catches up with her, and she remembers Hermione’s _talk_. So much had happened at the end of the year before; Ron and Hermione had been de-petrified, Dumbledore had been reinstated, Dobby had got a paying job in the Hogwarts kitchens- Hermione’s sitting her down with pamphlets and a stern look had almost been forgotten. Almost. For all that Harry had wished to disappear into a deep, black hole then, she was rather grateful now.

“Some people say that you become a woman when you get your period,” Hermione said frankly, “but it’s not really like that. It’s not a _nice_ thing - you might get cramps, but it depends on the person. The blood itself is-” her friend had wrinkled her nose, “not like normal blood. It’s kind of black, and sticky, and it smells.”

Harry had been horrified. “And this is going to happen? Over the summer?”

“Not necessarily!” Hermione had been quick to comfort her, “But it might. I know that me and Lavender are the only ones to have it in our dorm. My mum didn’t get hers until she was sixteen.”

Harry had relaxed a bit at that far off, distant number. Sixteen was sixth years, like Oliver and Percy and Angelina this coming year, all breaking voices and stubbly cheeks and round breasts and hair growing in odd places. That was forever away.

But this was not forever away. This was right now, Harry had to face this _right now -_ her one good nightie was ruined, her mattress probably little better. Her aunt and uncle would be so angry, and she could just imagine Dudley crowing to his mates about the blood and the mess and the _smell -_ Hermione really had not overstated how bad the smell was.

She looks out the window, sees the sun hasn’t yet risen. The Dursleys won’t be up for another couple of hours at least - it’s a Sunday, and they like to lie in on Sundays. Well, Dudley liked to lie in every day, but that was a moot point.

Despite her growth spurt, Harry’s still only a small girl, at a little over five foot, so it was a bit of an operation to strip the entire bed, especially whilst making sure that nothing touched the sodden nightie and knickers she wore. To her relief, the duvet itself wasn’t touched, just the cover and bedsheet. The pillows and pillow covers were also spared. She was less fortunate with the mattress - there was a large, red stain seeping deep into the material. She stepped gingerly out of her knickers, which were full of dark red gunk and brown, hardened discharge. She got out a fresh pair of knickers, and stuffed half a roll of toilet paper in them to try and save them from a similar fate. Then, still wearing her bloodstained nightie, she took the bedsheet, dirty knickers and duvet cover downstairs and put on a cold wash.

Obsessively, she checked that there wasn’t even a speck of blood on the kitchen floor, hallway carpet or stairs. When she was satisfied, she finally allowed herself to get out a too-small shirt to change into, and locked herself in the toilet. She used about three face-wipes to completely rub away the crusted blood from her skin, and then began to handwash the nightie in the sink, scrubbing it desperately, hoping against hope the stain would come out. Slowly, the darkness outside the high window turned to light, Harry’s skin started to go pink from friction, not blood, and she heard Vernon’s radio alarm click on.

She hadn’t managed to completely salvage the nightie - there was a red ring at the edges of where the blood had been, but the majority had washed away. Deciding it had to be good enough, she squeezed the excess water away, and darted back to her room to put it on the cold radiator. With any luck, if she left her window open all day, it would be dry by night time. Then she crept down the stairs, and made it to the washing machine - three minutes to go. She swallowed. It would be really, really tight.

A small eternity later, the washing machine slowed to a stop. Hurriedly, Harry took the now clean sheets and undergarments out, and squeezed them out in the sink. When she felt relatively confident they wouldn’t drip, she piled them up in her arms and made her way up the stairs. She almost made it, as well.

She froze as she and Aunt Petunia made eye contact, the other woman stopping mid-way through tying the belt on her frilly pink dressing gown. Her blue eyes flicked from the damp sheets in Harry’s hands, to the too-small top Harry wore, and the bulging knickers. “Get in your room,” her aunt hissed after a moment, and Harry did gladly. Nothing happened for another few minutes - Harry heard the kettle boiling, the murmurs of the news bulletins from the whiny radio two rooms over, Petunia’s footsteps going up the stairs. She took advantage of the time to spread her sheets over the radiator too, although she had to put them on top of each other when she ran out of room. Finally, the door clicked and Petunia silently stepped into the room.

“I didn’t mean to,” are the first words out of Harry’s words as her aunt looks disapprovingly at the large stain on Harry’s mattress and the wet sheets.

“Well of course not,” Petunia snaps, surprising Harry. She swallows, but says nothing as her aunt comes forward to inspect the mattress. “You’re not getting a new one,” she says as she purses her lips, and Harry nods frantically. She hadn’t been expecting a new mattress - they were expensive, and she knew that her relatives saw her as enough as a financial burden as it was. Next Petunia comes over to the radiator - she picks up the wet nightie, looks at the front and back, frowns at the red tide mark. She tuts when she sees that Harry has put the two sheets on top of each other. “Stupid girl,” she derides, “they’ll never dry like that. You have to put them on the washing line.” Then she points to the knickers. “Did you put them in soak?”

Harry shakes her head nervously. “No, Aunt Petunia.”

A flicker of an emotion that Harry doesn’t recognises crosses over her Aunt’s face for a moment. “Of course not.” She sighs. “You did... well cleaning up after yourself,” she admits, and Harry imagines her eyes must look as if they’re about to pop out of her head at the begrudging praise. She can’t remember the last time that Petunia said something nice to her, “Vernon and Dudley wouldn’t like to see any of this.”

“Thank-”

“Obviously, you didn’t know what to do,” Petunia continues, “but you did well enough for your first time. With stained clothes, you must always soak before you scrub. For sheets, you did well enough, but you can’t dry them on top of the other. The mattress will be fine, but you must properly protect yourself in future.” The woman seems to make a decision, “I will buy you your own pads and tampons, as you’ll need smaller ones than those I use, but it is your responsibility to dispose of them discreetly. Vernon and Dudley must never see any evidence of this, do you understand? They’re men. They don’t want to see it.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia.” Harry whispers, her stomach flipping.

Only her aunt has the ability to make her feel quite so small and stupid. Even blustering Uncle Vernon and brutal Dudley could never quite land such a direct hit on her psyche. But Petunia had always known how to hit where it hurts. Perhaps it comes with being a woman.

* * *

 

Petunia is not _nicer_ in the following weeks - but she is more understanding. She even signs Harry’s Hogsmeade permission form, something Harry hadn’t dared hope for, when she pointed out she might need to get out of the castle to get sanitary supplies on a regular basis. When Harry’s cycle finally ends, and she feels safe enough not to wear a pad every day, Petunia tells her to remember how many days it takes for it to begin again. “Your mother’s cycle was twenty eight days,” her aunt had said stiffly, “It was rather short. You might be the same.”

It is such a strange little thing to have of her mother, something that Harry had never thought about before - a cycle. Something that, in another world where her mother had lived, perhaps she’d have known without thinking. She knows that Aunt Petunia is 32 days, picks up on the small _P_ that she puts in the corner of the calendar stuck on the fridge among Dudley’s boxing matches and Vernon’s company dinners that she’s never really seen before. She takes up very little space, Harry realises. She has been teaching Harry to do the same. But Harry still doesn’t even feel brave enough to put her own little _H_ on the calendar, because she knows that even that much of a presence in the Dursley’s home would be unacceptable.

To her dismay, Harry doesn’t seem to have settled into any particular cycle - she spots for no reason, she goes longer and shorter without warning. But when she wakes up to an upset stomach one morning, a few days after her thirteenth birthday (Aunt Petunia had gotten her a small secondhand bra _,_ Ron had sent her a newspaper clipping which showed the Weasleys having a grand time in Egypt and a pocket sneakoscope, Hagrid had sent a book that bit everything and Hermione had sent her a broomstick servicing kit) she knows it has absolutely nothing to do with her period, because that was the day that Aunt Marge was due to arrive.

Aunt Marge was not actually Harry’s aunt, thank god. There was no blood relation between them - she was Vernon’s sister, and so in fact wasn’t really Harry’s aunt at all, but she still had to call her that or she’d get a dressing down for her disrespect.

Marge was _not_ a woman who tried to take up as little space as possible, Harry realises as she watches the portly woman lumber out of the car of her soulmate, a Colonel Fubster who never seems to say very much and usually begs out of the visits in order to watch over his and Marge’s bulldog breeding business. She was big and loud and forceful, and seemed to think that as she was the loudest voice in the room, she was also the wisest person in the room. Harry doesn’t blame her soulmate’s quick departure - if she had Marge for a soulmate, then she’d take every chance she had to get away from her for a few days. Although from a few conversations she’s overheard at Christmases when she’s younger, it seems like Marge isn’t the Colonel’s soulmate, but he’s hers. His first wife was his true match, but she died almost twenty years before. Harry can’t imagine what it would be like to go from a relationship with your soulmate, to a relationship with _Marge._

Vernon had already threatened Harry to be good, as he did every year. And every year, Harry said _yes, of course_ she would be good. And she always meant to be - but Marge always brought out the worst in her. Perhaps it would be easier this time, because of how they hadn’t met for the last few years - now that Harry was at Hogwarts and spending her Christmas holidays there, they hadn’t had to meet. But that pattern had been abandoned, as Marge wouldn’t be up for Christmas that year, instead going on a luxury cruise around the Mediterranean.

All Harry’s optimism for the visit disappeared as Marge looked at her and sniffed disapprovingly; “Still around here then, you little runt? Sponging off my brother’s kindness?”

Harry cast her eyes down. She had to be a good girl. “Yes, Aunt Marge.”

Satisfied for the time being, the large woman gave a loud sniff and turned her attention back to her dog, Ripper. Harry hated that dog, and would prefer to put as much space as possible between her and it as possible. However, it was not to be.

“Don’t you leave when I’m talking to you, girl!” Harry froze, and turned back around, a fixed smile pasted on her face.

“Sorry, Aunt Marge.”

Another sniff. It could have almost been approving. “Looks like you’ve learned something at that ruddy school of yours. What was it again?”

“St Clare’s,” Vernon hurriedly cut in, “it’s meant to be the best for hopeless cases. Teach the girls how to be proper young ladies.”

“Hmm,” Aunt Marge snorted doubtfully, “I’m not sure even a miracle worker could make a proper young lady out of this one.”

 _Or out of you,_ Harry thought acidically, having a very nice mental image of Aunt Marge being turned into a braying donkey, so that her appearance would finally match that of her personality.

“Girl!” Marge says sharply, and Harry looks up at her. “They use switches at St Clare’s?”

Over his sister’s shoulder, Uncle Vernon gives a short, sharp nod. “Yes, Aunt Marge,” Harry recites dutifully.

Marge makes a pleased sound into her teacup. “I won't have this namby-pamby, wishy-washy nonsense about not hitting people who deserve it. A good thrashing is what's needed in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. That’s what’s made the difference in you. I bet you’ve been beaten often, eh, girl?”

Realising that the woman was expecting an answer, Harry inclined her head. “Yes, Aunt Marge. A lot.”

The woman runs a critical eye down Harry’s bare arms and legs, which are unmarred save for the odd spot of sunburn or freckle. “On the arse, eh? That’s what they did at my old school - not proper for girls to walk around covered in bruises and welts like the boys. Bet that’s why you’re standing up, eh? The naughtier the girl, the harder it was to sit down.”

Harry’s face burns red, and her throat closes up. Dudley, even though he knows very well that Harry doesn’t go to any St Clare’s, laughs at Aunt Marge’s words. Petunia laughs uneasily, her eyes latched onto Harry’s, a warning in them; _don’t you dare._

Harry bites her tongue, and doesn’t dare. She’s a good girl. Good girls don’t swear or curse or argue. She lets the insults run off her back like water - _soon,_ her mind promises her, _soon she’ll be gone. Just one week. Just one week._

And no matter how manageable _just one week_ sounds, every single day feels like a year with Marge in the house. Harry has to listen to her snores through the walls, wash her clothes, feed and walk her dog (because Marge usually gets Colonel Fubster to do that, and she _can’t possibly_ , and the lazy girl should be grateful to get the exercise) all while the bloody thing nips at her ankles, cook her food, make her bed-

The truth is, although it is only one more person to look after (and one canine), Harry’s life becomes exponentially harder, because unlike the Dursleys who have grown bored of tormenting her, Marge appears to have been storing up her hatred for a special occasion. If Harry had been born a boy, perhaps she’d have enjoyed comparing him to Dudley, but Harry instead is awarded the dubious honour to being compared to Marge herself. “When I was her age,” Marge would say as she snaffled on some chocolates watching Harry mop the kitchen floor, “I wasn’t half so lazy. Never needed asking, just did.”

Harry’s on her hands and knees pulling some weeds out of Petunia’s prised rose bush, and Harry can hear Marge’s commentary from the other end of the garden: “She’s like a stick insect she is - when I was her age, I already had hips, meat on my bones. It comes from not having the right genes, you know - born all weak and spindly. No strength to her.”

“By god, she’s a dull one, Vernon,” Marge announces on the penultimate night of her visit as Harry clears the table. Dudley lets out a loud burp, and Marge pauses momentarily to fuss over her Dudders and his ‘hearty appetite’. Harry begins to wash the plates and pans and cutlery methodically, and knows that she is meant to hear every word. “Not that it’s your fault!” Marge tells her brother hurriedly, “God, no. You see it all the time in dogs - it’s all bloodlines, and she hasn’t a drop of Dursley in her- not to offend you, Petunia, but you did always say your sister was rather strange.”

“Rather,” Petunia echoes, the viciousness in her tone sounding half-hearted next to Marge’s words.

"It's one of the basic rules of breeding," she said. "You see it all the time with dogs. If there's something wrong with the bitch, there'll be something wrong with the pup-"

Harry grinds her teeth, and the lights flicker. _Be a good girl,_ she repeats to herself in a mantra, and Vernon makes some nervous joke about the wiring being on the blink. _Be a good girl, be a good girl, be a good-_ “But where was I? Oh yes, breeding - there was a beautiful stud I had once, and he ended up rutting one of the lesser bitches. You’d expect the children of that litter to be strong, but each and every one of them was infected, brought down to the mother’s level rather than being elevated to the father’s-”

At that moment, the wineglass Aunt Marge was holding exploded in her hand. Shards of glass flew in every direction and Aunt Marge sputtered and blinked, her great ruddy face dripping. Harry cannot stamp down the wish that she’d gotten glass her in the eye.

"Marge!" squealed Aunt Petunia. "Marge, are you alright?"

"Not to worry," grunted Aunt Marge, mopping her face with her napkin. "Must have squeezed it too hard. Did the same thing the other day with one of Fubster’s mother’s flutes... No need to fuss, Petunia, I have a very firm grip, always have.”

Her aunt tosses Harry a sharp look, and Harry gets the message loud and clear. She heads for the door. “Where are you going?” Marge booms. Harry swallows. Breathes. Turns. “Yes, you!” The large woman nods at her with all six of her chins, “Leaving the washing up half done! Lazy, lazy girl! Leave it for your poor aunt, she who took you in!”

Petunia laughs nervously. “It’s quite alright, Marge-”

“No!” Marge bangs her meaty fist on the table, “I won’t have it! You took her in, she can at least clean up the damned mess!”

Harry heads back to the sink, and picks up the plates - the soapy water is comforting on her cracked skin, and she tries to think of anything, anywhere but here. She is at the Granger’s house, Sandra is twirling in a creation of rainbow coloured fabric that’s half toga, half cape, Ron is staring down pensively at a chessboard, Hermione is reading lightning fast in front of the fire, Hedwig is nipping affectionately at her fingers before launching into the sky, Hagrid is pushing various inedible cakes and biscuits in her arms-

“Not always the bitch of course, the stud can equally be to blame - what did he do again? Oh, yes, he didn’t work - a layabout drunk, I bet, the whole reason the car crash happened in the first place, foisting his runty get on good, law abiding folk like yourselves - bad eggs like the two of them could only produce a rotten child-”

A plate breaks in Harry’s hands. The light pops, the room is in darkness. And Marge begins to scream as she grows, blows, blooms.

* * *

Harry is out of the house before Vernon can come shake her, scream at her - full of some kind of shaky strength, she manages to blow the cupboard door in with a look, drag her trunk out and hobble out the door in under three minutes. Harry trundles noisily down the street, and she can still hear Vernon crying out _Marge! Marge! Marge!_ if she focuses hard enough, and she can Mrs Number 7’s bedroom light clicking on. Harry hopes that the gossip mill runs wild. 

She is walking aimlessly as Privet Drive, and then the suburbs of Little Whinging disappear behind her. She’s wearing a thin top and hadn’t stopped to put on some proper shoes, just in the falling apart flip flops she wears for garden work, so her feet are aching and her body is shaking, and her hands are still cold from the wind on her wet knuckles that she hadn’t had the time to dry. In the end, she sits down on a random bit of pavement in front of a park that Harry thinks Aunt Petunia used to take Dudley to when he was little. She can’t be sure, because she never went with them. Freaks didn’t get to go to the park.

Harry doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She can’t go back, she knows that much: that’s why she’d left in such a rush in the first place. If she went back now, no amount of apologising would save her from Vernon’s loose punches and the bars going back on her window. She wishes she had a phone, or Hedwig, or something - but the Dursley’s would never get her a phone, and Hedwig had to go to Hermione’s house (where Sandra was apparently house sitting) for her own safety before Marge’s arrival. She can’t last the night out here - even if it is August, the clouds above her are threatening of a thunderstorm, but Harry doesn’t know where to go.

In the end, she trundles her trunk into the graffitied child’s playground, and sits on a creaky swing, tries to think. She can’t quite remember the last time she ate - she tries to count. She was going to have the remains of dinner tonight, but obviously hadn’t. Lunch had been cucumber soup, and Marge had let Ripper slurp up the remainder. Breakfast - well, she never got breakfast. Yesterday dinner the four of the others had gone out, and Harry had had a slice of Mrs Figg’s old fruitcake. She’d had crusts at yesterday lunch, and a banana that Dudley wouldn’t touch because it was bruised.

Her hands are shaking. She wonders if it is from the lack of food, the cold air or the fear that is coiling in her gut.

She jumps half a foot in the air, almost tumbling off the swing, when she feels something brush against her leg. She screams, but nobody comes, because she is in an abandoned park, and it’s just a dog. A shaggy, black dog with a dry nose and large eyes. Harry can see every rib on its side.

“You poor thing,” she after letting out a shaky breath, slipping to the astro-turf under the swings, holding out her hand gingerly. The dog licks it, and lets out a bark. Harry feels herself relax. At least this dog wasn’t a bigger, meaner Ripper. She rubs behind the dog’s ears, and it’s tail wags weakly. “What happened to you, huh? Something bad, I bet. You look like you’ve been on the streets.”

The dog nuzzles at her, and is surprisingly warm to the touch. Harry sighs at the heat. “Any tips, pal? Looks like I might be sleeping rough myself for a little while?” The dog growls, and Harry almost wonders if it can understand her. “Hey, shhh, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” And within a moment, the dog is back to acting like a puppy. It’s tail wags harder, and it flops over on its side.

On instinct, Harry rubs its belly, and is rewarded by a whine of happiness. “You may look scary but you’re just a big softie, aren’t you?” She says, and laughs when the dog whines again. She wishes she could spend forever petting that dog, losing herself in the rhythmic movements, but the minutes are slipping away, and the sky is growing cloudier and darker by the minute. Harry clambers to her feet.

“I have to go now,” She says, “I’m sorry, I need to find some cover.” She walks away, but the dog stays with her. “I don’t have any food,” Harry says, opening her palms wide so the dog can see that her hands are empty, “I’m sorry.”

The dog, rather than getting the message, sticks like glue to Harry’s side as she walks down the street. Harry sighs, but figures that he’ll catch on sooner or later when there’s no food forthcoming. And she can’t lie, she quite likes the dog by her side - warm, constant, and making her feel a little bit safer in the darkness. She gets out her wand, and wishes that she knew the spell that Professor Snape had used at the end of last year to send a message. At the sight of her wand, the dog starts pushing for it.

“No, this isn’t a stick-” Harry says, lifting her wand high in the air and out of the dog’s reach, “you can’t play with this.” 

The dog jumps, and Harry automatically swings her wand over her shoulder, away from her- and then there is a woosh of purple, and Harry can’t help but think _I didn’t say anything! Nothing should have happened!_ The air around her flushes for a moment, and suddenly she is face to face with a thin young man with large ears, acne and tired eyes, and there is a violently bright triple story bus looming over her.

The dog barks happily.

The young man launches into a clearly well rehearsed speech. “Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening.”

Harry blinks. “I, er-”

Stan Shunpike looks her up and down. “Need ‘elp with that there trunk, miss?”

“I- yes.” Harry stammers when she realises she’s meant to have purposefully summoned this purple monstrosity. “Let me just- let me just get my money.”

Stan Shunpike rolls his eyes, but nods, and Harry clicks her trunk open and frantically scrabbles for her money pouch. To her relief, her fist closes around it and she can hand over her trunk without looking like any more of an idiot. Surprisingly, the dog seems completely unphased by the magically appeared bus - Harry wonders if he’s so malnourished that he’s decided that huge purple buses are totally normal.

“Where’d ya wanna go?” Stan asks when her case is stowed, “We can go anywhere in the UK, we can. Anywhere on land, that is. Can’t go underwater or nuffink.”

“I-” Harry’s mind spins. Ron is in Egypt, Hermione’s in France. The only other place she knows is Diagon Alley. “London, please. The Leaky Cauldron.”

“Eleven sickles,” Stan says promptly, “but for firteen you get 'ot chocolate, and for fifteen you get an 'ot-water bottle an' a toofbrush in the color of your choice. Oi, what’s your name? You travel often enough, ya get a free ‘ot chocolate.”

Harry quickly handed over fifteen sickles, and gave Hermione’s name. She could really do with something in her stomach, even if it was a liquid and not a proper meal, and a hot water bottle. A toothbrush wouldn’t go amiss either. She looked down guiltily at the dog that still stood by her side, wagging it’s tail. The dog was very thin, she thought doubtfully, and she knew that dog’s noses were meant to be wet. She can’t very well leave him now. “Is it okay for my dog to come along?”

“Five sickles extra,” Stan rattles off without a second thought, “for seven I can throw in a doggy bed, ten for dog foo’ and water.” The dog looks up at her with large eyes, and Harry hands over another ten sickles before scratching between the dog’s ears.

* * *

Harry couldn’t have slept on the Knight bus if she wanted to - it was enough of a struggle to stop herself from spilling her hot chocolate, let alone to relax. But she warmed up, and the dog ate like it had been starving, and she can feel her limbs going heavy with calm as she looks curiously at the Daily Prophet Stan’s reading.  

“I’ve seen him before,” Harry says, frowning at the man on the front of the paper, blinking slowly.

Stan looks round his own paper to see where she’s looking. “I bet you ‘ave,” he says, “That there’s Sirius Black.” He stares at her, as if expecting her to scream or something. At her side, the dog’s ears prick up. Harry automatically runs and palm down his head to soothe him. The name niggles in the back of her mind.

“I live with muggles,” she says, frowning, not liking the way that the name _Sirius Black_ both means something and nothing to her, “so how…”

“Oh, ‘es on the muggle news too!” Stan said with a wave of his hand, “Minister told the muggle PM about it, so they’re all on the lookout too - he’s an escapee from Azkaban, ya know. First one ever to get out alone. Nobody knows ‘ow he did it, but everyone’s right scared - ‘e was one of You-Know-Oo’s biggest supporters back in the day. Killed firteen muggles with one curse!”

The man doesn’t look like a murderer. He just looks very tired, and distant, vacant even - if he didn’t blink every ten seconds or so, Harry would have said that it was a muggle photograph. Still, she shivers. She knows the kind of man that Voldemort is, and she has no intention of running into one of his followers.

Taking pity on her, Stan tosses the front page over so that Harry can read it. The dog huddles closer to her side, and she’s glad of it and it’s body heat as she pores over the page. _Possibly the most infamous prisoner ever held at Azkaban fortress… remain calm… danger to anyone who crosses him… massacre…_

“Well shit,” Harry says to the dog, whose ears are flat against his head, “I don’t think I’ll ever get a quiet year at this rate, do you?”

Her words are proven entirely correct when the Knight Bus slowed to a stop outside the Leaky Cauldron, and Harry saw that the Minister of Magic was waiting for her.

* * *

Harry spent the next two weeks quite happily in the Leaky Cauldron after Fudge had greeted her with simultaneous relief and exasperation, the exasperation mainly being that the second the Minister came into view, her dog had fled the Knight Bus like the bats of hell were after him. Harry had yelled after him to no avail, and was rather bitter than the Minister had chased off her new friend.  

However, once he had told her that Aunt Marge had been punctured (and oh, how Harry liked the image of somebody popping her like a balloon and all the hot air rushing out of her) and her memory modified, and that she wasn’t going to be expelled for her accidental magic or forced to return to Privet Drive (at least not until next summer), Harry’s mood had lifted considerably and she found herself forgiving the Minister for the dog’s departure - even moreso when it turned out that Hedwig had somehow known that she’d left the Dursleys, and had nipped Sandra, who was house-sitting now that Hermione was too old for an au pair, goodbye before flying straight to London.

In exchange for what Harry considered the best fortune she’d had for a very long time, the Minister had extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t wander into muggle London for the remainder of the holidays, and would tell Tom (the toothless bartender, whose name Harry jumped at despite herself) whenever she was venturing into Diagon Alley. He sounded worried that she’d do something reckless, but with her flight from Privet Drive, Harry felt like she’d used up all her daring. The Leaky Cauldron made her feel safe, as small and cosy as it was, and thankfully wasn’t hosting anyone by the name of Dursley. In the grates the fires burned green and the plates cleaned themselves and the mirrors chided her over her messy hair. It felt an awful lot like Harry supposed a home would feel like.

The week unfolded at a lazy pace - Harry did her summer homework, spoiled Hedwig, and battled with Hagrid’s incredibly violent birthday present. When Harry had gone to Flourish and Blotts in the hope that somebody there would know how to open it, the poor shop assistant had almost cried when he caught sight of the belted tome in Harry’s arms. “They’re evil things,” he had whimpered as he stared miserably at the struggling book that was still burping out pieces of paper, _"_ _The_ _Monster Book of Monsters_ is an apt name.”

She went into what must have been every shop in Diagon Alley, from apothecary's that smelled like Snape’s classroom to ramshackle bric-a-bracs to _Quality Quidditch Supplies_ (where she spent a lot of time staring longingly at the Firebolt in the window) and _Madam Malkin’s_. The last was a particularly uncomfortable outing because Harry had, somehow, already grown too big for the bra that Aunt Petunia had got her a matter of weeks before. When she had whispered her problem to Madam Malkin, the witch smiled down at her kindly. “You’re on a growth spurt, little lady,” she had said, flicking her wand that set her tape measure zooming about Harry, “perfectly normal.”

It was still strange to Harry to be considered perfectly normal, when all her life she’d been an anomaly. In the end, she walks away from Malkin’s with two bras - one the colour of her skin that will grow with her for a year, and the other a white, elasticated sports bra specifically for Quidditch matches that made her chest as flat as it had been the year before without any pain. “Gwenog Jones buys all hers from me as well,” the witch had told her with a wink, “best quality guaranteed!”

For all that Harry had enjoyed her time at the Leaky Cauldron, she cannot help the smile that almost splits her face in half when she gets letters from both Ron and Hermione telling her that they’re finally back in the country, and will meet her the next day to do their Hogwarts shopping.

The book lists this year had nothing by Gilderoy Lockhart on them, thank Merlin, the man in question having been shipped to Azkaban to serve consecutive life sentences when it had been discovered via his doping with Veritaserum that he had used memory charms on every single witch or wizard that had performed the heroic deeds he took as his own in his books. Lockhart’s trial had been one of the hot topics that the people in the Leaky Cauldron discussed, coming as a close second after Sirius Black’s escape and his continued eluding of the authorities.

Harry was up at six in the morning the following day, practically bouncing off the walls in excitement at the thought of seeing her friends, and they didn’t disappoint. The Weasley’s flooed into the Leaky Cauldron at seven twenty, and Harry had pounced on Ron before he’d properly steadied himself.

“Bloody hell Harry!” He cried, but hugged her back just as tightly, lifting her off the ground, “Is Mione here yet?”

“Her letter said she’d be here at eight,” Harry says quickly, and pulls back to inspect her friend. Ron had grown another few inches at least, and Harry feels like he’s starting to take the piss as he’s now of a height with the twins, who were two years older. She has a horrible feeling that he’ll grow to be a height with his father, or even taller, which is just _unfair_. His hair has grown out a little too, and he keeps on having to brush his red fringe out of his eyes, and his freckles have multiplied almost exponentially, probably as a result of being in the Egyptian sun for weeks on end, and are joining together in places. A brand new wand sticks out of his pocket, and it’s this that Harry comments on. “You finally got one of your own!” Harry squeals, and Ron beams, getting it out to show it to her.

“Fourteen inches, willow, unicorn hair core,” he says proudly. Compared to the one he’d been using before, which he’d inherited from his older brother Charlie, the new wand gleamed in Ron’s palm, not a wisp of unicorn hair in sight.

“It’s beautiful, Ron,” Harry said honestly, and the boy grinned happily.

“It feels so much stronger than the old one, like it understands my magic, you know? I think ‘Mione will be surprised with how much better I am at casting now-”

“You can cast over the summer?” Harry said jealousy.

Ron nodded, scratching the back of his neck. “Purebloods and half bloods who live in magical areas can, generally, because the ministry can’t _who_ is casting and whether they’re underage, just where spells are being cast. So if I practice at home, I’m alright, cause it could be mum or dad or Percy. But if you live in Muggle areas, with Muggles - it’s pretty obvious it’s an underage witch or wizard, because there’s no other interference. Don’t tell Hermione,” he said very quickly, “she’d get mad.”

Harry mimes zipping her mouth shut. “Your secret is safe with me,” she vows.

Ron doesn’t quite seem to understand the action, but he nods anyway. “You’ve got to tell me about what happened with your aunt,” he says, pulling her over to the threadbare sofa in front of the fire, “you can’t just write ‘I accidently blew her up’ and then _not_ elaborate.”

Harry rolls her eyes, and launches into the story, Ron looking suitably cross as she details just how awful Marge was and appropriately gleeful when Harry explained that as far as she understood from what Fudge said, Marge had been blown over twenty miles and had to be punctured before being obliviated. “ _Wicked_ ,” Ron said appreciatively, before his face lit up at something behind Harry.

Harry already knew exactly who Ron looked at just like that, so she squeals “Mione!” before she even turns to see her other best friend standing in the doorway, Dr and Dr Granger standing behind her. She’s a little more tanned as well, but nowhere near as much as Ron, and her eyes are bright with excitement as she swoops forward to wrap both Harry and Ron in a hug. Dan and Emma watch happily, before Mrs Weasley bustled over and drew the two muggles into conversation - it appeared that since their first meeting the previous year, the two sets of parents had been keeping in contact.

Hermione pulled back, still grinning. “How are you both? Ron, you look so _brown._ Also, Harry you have to tell me _everything_ about this whole blowing up your aunt business, because you did not give enough detail in your letter-”

Harry laughs at how her and Ron’s demands were essentially the same, and prepared to tell the same story for a second time. Before she could though, Ron launched into it instead, and Harry happily let him take the lead; he was a much better narrator than Harry, and somehow made Aunt Marge into even more of a beast than she was in real life (if that was possible). When he reached the end, Hermione put her head on Harry shoulder and squeezed her a second time. “Well she sounds ghastly,” Hermione said with feeling, “I wish I’d been there so we could stage a jailbreak again.”

“Did you not like France?” Harry asked with a frown, “I thought you enjoyed the trip?”

“ _Je t'aime Francais,_ ” Hermione said in a horrible French accent, “but I don’t love it as much as I love you.”

Something warm rose in Harry’s chest, and she buried her face in Hermione’s hair. She could hear the twins going “ _Awww,”_ in unison at the action, and she lifted her head momentarily to stick her tongue out at them. For the first time, she found it possible to differentiate the twins without any particular effort, because Ron’s letters about Fred getting terribly sunburnt were not exaggerating at all. His face was a bright red, his skin peeling on his nose, whilst his identical twin seemed significantly paler than Ron.

 _Fred went out in the midday sun without any sun cream on the second day,_ Ron had written to her, _and his skin never recovered after that. George was forewarned, so he wore more cream than anyone else combined, and never stopped because Fred kept on whining about how much it hurt. So mum’s had a relatively easy time telling them apart over the holiday, which they_ hate.

“Caught the sun?” Harry said innocently, and Fred mock glowered at her, shaking a fist in her direction, while George snickered at his twin’s misfortune.

* * *

The three of them ended up trooping around Diagon alone after promising that they wouldn’t leave the alley or take too long; Ron seemed all too ready to leave his family behind, or more specifically, the twins. “Fred’s on the warpath,” he said sagely, “and I don’t want to be around when he finally explodes.” 

Harry’s last week in the alley did seem to make school shopping a lot easier - as she already had all her stuff, she could direct her friends to the correct sections and shops to get what they needed, and had even bought each of them a heavy-duty belt that she felt could handle _The Monster Book of Monsters._ If possible, the shop assistant looked even more bedraggled and worn out than he had earlier in the week. “Never again,” he vowed as he pulled on some thick leather gloves and moved towards the cage holding the books with purpose, “I don’t care if students have to mail order these things, we are not holding these bloody things again.”

Harry made a sympathetic noise as the poor man almost got his nose bitten off by Hermione’s newest text. “You still like books?” Harry asked Hermione after she had finally managed to belt her book shut. Ron was still being chased by his.

“Of course,” Hermione said in between gasps, “just… not these ones.”

After they had done battle with their Care of Magical Creatures texts, finding copies of _Unfogging the Future,_ _Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles_ (which were, of course, at opposite sides of the book store) and all the other required textbooks for all the other elective classes that Hermione was taking alone, seemed incredibly easy, even if Harry and Ron needed to split up Hermione’s books between them, as she also bought the five ‘extra’ books she was permitted by her parents.

“So, you planning on sleeping at all this year, Hermione?” Harry asked breathlessly as she hauled the books over to the counter, where thankfully a feather light, magically expanded bag could be purchased. 

Hermione ignored her soulmate as Ron guffawed.

“I still have ten galleons,” Hermione said when they finally made it out of Flourish and Blotts, “I think I might get myself an early birthday present.”

“How about a nice book?” Ron asked with a poker face he must have perfected after a lifetime of living in close quarters with the twins. Hermione stuck her tongue out at her soulmate.

“I was thinking I might get an owl,” Hermione said, valiantly ignoring the teasing of her closest friends, “because that way I can stay in contact with you two more frequently, instead of having to hire a bird or wait for Errol or Hedwig to come to me, because both of you are _awful_ at writing.”

Harry and Ron exchanged a look of panic. “We are really sorry,” Harry began, “but-”

“It’s fine,” said Hermione with a sigh, looking at the two of them rather mischievously. “I don’t expect any better.”

Ron let out a squawk of outrage, and Hermione began to run as he chased her. Giggling, Harry followed them, weaving in and out of the crowds of wizards. She caught sight of a few familiar faces - Dean and Seamus had their noses pressed to the glass of _Quality Quidditch Supplies,_ doubtlessly mooning after the Firebolt; Neville Longbottom was walking towards Gringotts with his grandmother, an imposing witch who wore a bird on her hat; Padma and Parvati Patil were walking together (for once without linked arms) with an Indian wizard accompanying them who Harry presumed was their father.

Harry had allowed herself to get distracted, and she almost missed the doorway into _Magical Menagerie,_ where she could make out Ron tickling Hermione ruthlessly as she shuddered with laughter. “Say it!” Ron was demanding.

“N-n-nev-” Hermione let out a loud cry of mirth, “F-fine! Yo- you’re not a ba-bad pen pa-al!”

Ron and Harry both knew perfectly well they were utterly abysmal penpals, but that wasn’t the point _._ “Good enough,” Ron said with a shrug, releasing Hermione, who almost fell to the floor as the laughter racking her frame unbalanced her.

“You- you are _evil_ ,” Hermione said spasmodically as her laughter died down, but there was no bite in her voice, and she appeared to be wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. Ron grinned unapologetically.

In the end, Hermione went off to browse through the owls alone, as Ron decided that as they were in a pet store, they had better get Scabbers checked out. “I don’t think Egypt agreed with him,” he said with a sigh, retrieving his rat from one of his pockets. Harry frowned - he was right, Scabbers looked significantly thinner than he had at the end of second year, although that may have been because Percy was overfeeding him due to guilt over Ron’s petrified state. Harry said as much as the line moved forward, and Ron shook his head. “He only lost the weight once we were in Egypt,” the boy said, “went right off his food.”

As if on cue, Scabbers whiskers drooped a little. “Poor little guy,” Harry said, as the witch in front of them left, and they were at the front of the line.

The witch at the counter, who wore very thick, black spectacles, looked at the grey rat with raised eyebrows. “Bang him on the counter,” she said with a sigh, not even bothering to ask what the problem was.

She picked him up, inspecting his tail, whiskers, paws and fur. “How old is this rat?” She asked finally.

Ron shrugged. “Old. He belonged to my older brother before he was mine, and he got him when he was a kid.”

For a moment, Harry tried to imagine Percy Weasley, new Head Boy at Hogwarts, as a small child that had a pet rat, particularly _this_ pet rat. It didn’t really work. She just imagined a first year Ron with horn rimmed glasses. Harry decided to keep this thought to herself, she imagined that Ron would be mortally offended by the comparison.

“And what powers does he have?”

Ron looked at the very normal, grey rat with a squint, as if hoping for the rodent to suddenly start glowing. “Er-”

When she realised no answer would be forthcoming, the witch tutted loudly, cradling the rat in her practised hands. “Been through the mill this one,” she said, looking accusingly at Ron as she inspected Scabbers’ tattered left ear and missing toe.

“He was like that when I got him,” Ron said defensively.

"An ordinary common or garden rat like this can't be expected to live longer than three years or so," said the witch, apparently giving up on guilting Ron. "Now, if you were looking for something a bit more hard-wearing, you might like one of these-"

She pointed to a cage of glossy, black rat next to the counter, which were doing acrobatics. Ron rolled his eyes, and muttered “Show-offs,” under his breath.

“If you don’t want a replacement, you could try this rat tonic," said the witch, reaching under the counter and bringing out a small red bottle.

"Okay," said Ron with a sigh. "How much?”

After the witch quoted what was frankly an utterly outrageous price, Harry and Ron walked away from the counter empty handed, and went to find Hermione.

“Maybe Scabbers does have powers,” Harry said optimistically, not liking the defeated slump of Ron’s shoulders, “she said he should only live three years, but you’ve had him for almost that long, and Percy had him long before you. So maybe he’s immortal.”

Ron looked at Scabbers with an evaluating glance. Harry had to admit, the sickly rat didn’t _look_ immortal. “Maybe just really long lived?” He amended.

Harry shrugged. “Works for me.”

At that moment, there was an immediate threat to Scabbers life, which might have prevented Harry proving her immortality theory - a blur of orange, spitting madly, pounced towards Scabbers and attached itself to Ron’s jumper. Her friend let out a yell of surprise and pain, and the witch behind the counter rushed out to restrain what was either an incredibly large cat, or a particularly small tiger.

“No, Crookshanks, _no_!” she scolded the - Harry was going to guess, but she couldn’t be sure - cat. However, she didn’t have time to stick around for the rest of the feline’s telling off, as Scabbers had shot from Ron’s hands like a bar of soap, landed splay-legged on the floor by some miracle, and then scampered for the door.

"Scabbers!" Ron shouted, racing out of the shop after him; Harry followed.

It took them nearly ten minutes to catch Scabbers, who had taken refuge under a wastepaper bin outside Quality Quidditch Supplies. Ron stuffed the trembling rat back into his pocket and straightened up, massaging his head, where he had been stepped on by one of the many patrons of the alley who apparently hadn’t noticed there was a person beneath his foot instead of the cobblestone pavement.

“Where’s Hermione?” he groaned.

“Still in the shop, probably,” Harry said, hoping that Hermione had chosen her owl by now.

That hope was abandoned when, as they reached the _Magical Menagerie,_ Hermione exited, her arms clamped around something that was not, in fact, an owl, but instead a large, ginger cat that was purring loudly. In fact, Harry realised as they got closer, it was the very same ginger cat that had attempted to murder Ron’s pet rat.

"You _bought_ that monster?" said Ron, his mouth hanging open.

"He's gorgeous, isn't he?" said Hermione, glowing.

Harry thought that was a matter of opinion. The cat's ginger fur was thick and fluffy, but it was definitely a bit bowlegged and its face looked grumpy and oddly squashed, as though it had run headlong into a brick wall.

Ron was not quite as diplomatic. “That thing tried to kill Scabbers!” He cried, outraged.

“He didn’t mean to, did you, Crookshanks?" said Hermione sappily, looking at the cat like it was a very small baby, instead of the beast it actually was.

Harry put a hand on Ron’s shoulder before he managed. “There’s no point in fighting it,” she advised to him quietly, “she’s already bonded with it.”

Ron still looked particularly sour. “He had better not go after Scabbers again,” he finally managed, shooting the cat a distrustful look.

“Oh, yes! Scabbers! Before I forget - here’s his rat tonic.”

Ron stared at the rat tonic in Hermione’s palm, clearly fighting an internal battle between rejecting charity, which his pride had never allowed before, or accepting his soulmate’s gift for his clearly ill pet. In the end, he sighed, and gave a muffled _thanks_ before stuffing the red bottle in his pocket, scowling. his ears burning a bright red. Harry was, in a strange way, quite proud of him - he definitely was figuring out that sometimes people gave you things out of love, not pity.

“And as for Hogwarts, don’t worry,” Hermione said brightly, not taking her eyes off her new pet, although that may have been planned so that Ron couldn’t think twice and try to return the tonic, “Crookshanks will be sleeping in my dormitory and Scabbers in yours, there won’t be any problem.” A horrible thought then occurred to Harry; _she_ would be sleeping in the same dorm as the demonic cat, even if Scabbers wasn’t. She swallowed. Oblivious to her mounting horror, Hermione continued, “Poor Crookshanks, that witch said he'd been in there for ages; no one wanted him.”

“I wonder why,” Ron said venomously, thankfully not loud enough for Hermione to hear, or Harry felt like she would have witnessed a reenactment of the Scabbers vs Crookshanks fight, but this time with their respective owners, soulmates or no.

* * *

To Harry’s delight, the Grangers and Weasleys were going to be staying at the Leaky Cauldron overnight, so that the three families could go to the platform together. Ron and Hermione had apparently not told her in order for it to be a surprise, but had actually forgotten until Mr Weasley announced it.  

“You guys are the worst,” Harry said, punching her friends lightly on the arm, but she couldn’t stop smiling. Even Crookshanks seemed to have maintained his good mood, going to lay himself in front of the fire contentedly.

Percy was the main source of entertainment that night, as whilst he wasn’t meaning to be funny, it was difficult not to laugh at the formal way he was addressing everyone and how he had pinned his head boy badge to the brim of his hat so it could be seen at all times. Ginny managed to ask Harry to pass two plates without stuttering, and Mr Weasley managed to divert the conversation from Sirius Black multiple times, something Harry was grateful for as after a week listening to the gossiping witches and wizards of Diagon, she felt like she’d heard it all before. Scabbers seemed to have regained enough appetite to come out and nibble on some of Ron’s untouched salad, even if Emma Granger first thought he was a pest and not a pet, and let out a scream at the sight of him.

“Mum has a thing about rats,” Hermione said apologetically, “when she was a little girl one got into her playpen and bit her.”

Ron shuddered. “Sounds like when Fred and George turned my teddy into a giant spider. Scarred me for life.”

In sensitivity for his soulmate’s mother’s nerves, Ron removed Scabbers from the table and buttoned up his pocket. The rat seemed to take the enclosement with equanimity, perhaps because he had already eaten his fill, and he was further away from Crookshanks this way. Never let it be said that prey animals don’t know when there’s a predator in the room.

Eventually, when Harry was full to bursting and even Ron with his nigh-on bottomless stomach was feeling the same, the children trooped up to bed. Harry bristled at the bedtime, as she had been able to choose when she went to bed for a week, before realising it was about the same time she went up anyway. She, Hermione and Ginny would be sharing a room, whilst Ron, Fred, George and Percy took the other. Harry’s redheaded best friend looked incredibly nervous to be in an enclosed space with his brothers, particularly Fred, and soon his caution was proved to be correct.

“ _My head boy badge! It’s gone!”_ Harry heard Percy’s exclamation through the wall, and Ginny, who hadn’t made any noise since they had changed into their pyjamas, let out a heavy sigh.

“Fred,” she said knowingly.

Ron’s prediction of the twin’s explosion seemed to have been utterly correct; whilst Percy was ripping apart the boy’s room, and then the girl’s (much to Hermione’s protests as she had to dislodge Crookshanks from her bed in order for Percy to search under the covers, something the cat did not like at all) Harry saw a tell-tale twitch of the lips from the more sunburnt of the twins.

Percy eventually decided it must have fallen off his hat downstairs, so the group split up to scour the lower levels. Harry decided to use the invisibility cloak whilst she searched, as she didn’t want anyone to see that her nightie had a pinkish tidemark on it, one that Hermione had promised she would scourgify into oblivion once they were back at Hogwarts and could use magic again.

Harry was very glad of this decision, because it allowed her to eavesdrop when she heard Mr and Mrs Weasley talking about her.

"...makes no sense not to tell her," Mr. Weasley was saying heatedly. "Harry's got a right to know. I've tried to tell Fudge, but he insists on treating her like a child. She’s thirteen years old, not three-”

“Arthur, the truth would terrify her!” Mrs Weasley said shrilly, “Do you really want to send Harry back to school with that hanging over her? For heaven's sake, she's happy not knowing!"

"I don't want to make her miserable, I want to put her on her guard!" retorted Mr. Weasley. "That girl has faced more than many grown wizards, including a _basilisk._ She saved our Ginny when everyone else gave her up as a lost cause - it would be the height of hypocrisy for us to decide she’s too young to know what Black is-”

Harry narrowed her eyes. This was about Black? She half felt like tearing her cloak off and telling them that she already knew about Black and what he’d done - the murders, that he came from one of the darkest families in Britain (although she knew that part because of her extensive genealogical studies of the year before rather than from local alley gossip), the way he had been a spy on the light side, how he laughed as they took him in-

“She’s too young!” Mrs Weasley insisted, “She’s just a little girl!”

“You think that would matter to Sirius Black?” Mr Weasley shot back, “When I think what could have happened when she ran away from home! If the Knight Bus hadn’t picked her up, I'm prepared to bet she would have been dead before the Ministry found her."

"But she's not dead, she's fine, so what's the point-"

"Molly, they say Sirius Black's mad, and maybe he is, but he was clever enough to escape from Azkaban, and that's supposed to be impossible. It's been three weeks, and no one's seen hide nor hair of him, and I don't care what Fudge keeps telling the Daily Prophet, we're no nearer catching Black than inventing self-spelling wands. The only thing we know for sure is what Black’s after-”

“Harriet will be perfectly safe at Hogwarts, Dumbledore will protect-”

“Like he protected Ginny?” Mr Weasley snapped. Mrs Weasley went white, and her husband ran a hand down his face, the picture of fatigue. “All I’m saying is, we thought that Azkaban was impossible to escape from. But Black escaped. I’m not willing to bet on the girl’s life that he won’t be able to do the impossible twice and break into Hogwarts. She needs to know, Molly. She _deserves_ to know.”

Harry felt like cheering at Mr Weasley’s speech. She did deserve to know, and she was not a little kid who needed protection from the real world. She had grown up in a cupboard, had a murderer’s name on her wrist, and had defeated said murderer three times. She didn’t need coddling. She _needed_ the truth if she was going to prepare herself for whatever was coming, be it Voldemort or one of his followers.

“Nobody even knows that he’s actually after Harry-” Mrs Weasley protested, but weaker than before.

There was a thud on wood as Mr Weasley banged his fist on the table in anger. "Molly, how many times do I have to tell you? They didn't report it in the press because Fudge wanted it kept quiet, but Fudge went out to Azkaban the night Black escaped. The guards told Fudge that Blacks been talking in his sleep for a while now. Always the same words: "Hogwarts… Get to Hogwarts..." Black is deranged, Molly, and he wants Harry dead. If you ask me, he thinks murdering Harry will bring You-Know-Who back to power. Black lost everything the night she stopped You-Know-Who, and he's had _twelve years_ alone in Azkaban to brood on that..."

Harry stepped out of the room as quietly as she could. Her stomach was twisting, but she was glad she knew now. If- no, _when_ Black came, she’d be ready for him.

* * *

As Harry passed through the barrier into Platform 9 ¾ she let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Hedwig too seemed pleased that there wasn’t a repeat of the year before when she’d been unceremoniously thrown about. Hermione had gone in before her this year, Crookshanks cradled in her arms like an overgrown baby, and Ron quickly followed. The three of them, whilst not cutting it particularly fine, hadn’t come in time to secure an empty carriage - the best they could get was one with a sleeping man in, who Hermione quickly realised was a professor.

“You think he’s out?” Harry asked Ron, who peered at the man’s lax face for a long moment.

“No reason why he’d pretend to be asleep before we even got here,” he said with a shrug, and Harry nodded, satisfied. As soon as the train began to move, she recounted the entire overheard conversation from the night before to her friends. The year before had taught her a lot, and one of those lessons had been to not delay telling her friends vital pieces of information, be it about voices in the walls or house-elves or a diary that wrote back.

“Blimey,” Ron said when she’d finished talking, “I had no idea it was that bad. I mean, I knew the whole ministry was looking, but that they’ve got _nothing?_ This Black guy must be packing some serious power, especially if he’s evading them without a wand. His will have been snapped upon entry to Azkaban years ago, it’s procedure for major crimes, and I feel like you’d _notice_ if yours was nicked, but nobody’s said theirs has disappeared.”

“He could be doing wandless magic,” Hermione said worriedly, biting at her fingernails, “but that’s meant to be incredibly difficult and rare. Most wizards aren’t even capable-”

“You don’t get to be Voldemort’s right hand by being most wizards,” Harry pointed out, gnawing on her lip. For all that Harry knew that worrying wouldn’t help anything, she couldn’t help feel a little bit sick. Maybe Mrs Weasley had been right. But she brushes that thought aside - Black would still be coming for her, whether she knew it or not. It was better to be aware. To have time to prepare.

“We need to train,” Hermione said decisively, “after Lockhart last year, we’re severely behind in Defence. If our new teacher isn’t any good then we’re toast.” Harry raised her eyebrows at her friend, before inclining her head toward the fourth, sleeping figure in the carriage. “Oh,” Hermione said as she realised, “Do you think-”

“Don’t recognise him,” Ron said with a shrug, “and if he was one of the elective teachers, I’d know his name. Between them, Bill, Charlie, Percy and the twins have taken every elective on offer.”

“With any luck he’ll be somewhat decent,” Harry said tentatively, deciding to give R.J. Lupin the benefit of the doubt - he couldn’t be any worse than a man being possessed by Lord Voldemort and a talentless fraud. It was a very low bar, Harry allowed. “But still, we can’t rely on that. I agree with Hermione - we should get a study group together or something.”

Ron’s face fell at the words ‘study group'. “But that’s what _Ravenclaws_ are for,” he whined half-heartedly.

“ _Ron_.” Hermione’s tone brooked no room for opposition.

“Fine,” Ron sighed, “but I demand breaks! And snacks. Lots of snacks. Talking of snacks - when’s the trolley witch going to get here?”

Hermione stared at her soulmate incredulously. “You had a full English breakfast.” 

“That _two hours_ ago,” Ron said dramatically, “I’m a growing boy.”

Harry scowled at the reminder. “You could do with growing a bit less.”

“It’s a conspiracy,” the boy accused the two witches, “you two want to keep me hungry so that I shrink.”

“Would that work?” Harry asked, only half joking. This, it turned out, was a mistake, as Hermione decided it was time to give a lecture on exactly how the teenage body needed nutrients and protein to grow stronger, and used words that made both Ron and Harry cringe like _puberty_ and _periods._

In her horror, Harry hadn’t particularly noticed the train slowly decreasing in speed at first. But then temperature dropped significantly, and the tracks began to screech, the light popped out. “Why have we stopped?” Hermione asked, but Ron and Harry were as clueless as she was. “Maybe there’s something wrong with the engine?”

“It’s a magical train,” Harry said in confusion, “it shouldn’t have any problems.”

“Tell that to last year,” Ron scoffed.

There was a cracking noise, and Harry’s mouth dropped open of its own accord as she watched ice form before her eyes on the window. Hermione’s water bottle, sitting half drained on the trestle table, was turning solid. “Something’s really wrong,” Harry managed to stutter out. It felt like her blood was turning to ice as well. Crookshanks let out a yowl of agreement.

“Maybe he’ll know?” Ron said, nodding towards the still sleeping professor, and Harry had just decided to reach out to wake him and damn the possible loss of points when the compartment door slid open.

It all sort of went to shit after that.

* * *

Harry came back to herself sprawled on the floor, staring into the out of focus, worried faces of her best friends, a woman’s scream still ringing in her ears like a bell, and heavy feeling of her limbs being spelled still so that she can be moved and manipulated by a madman. _I will return for you, Harriet Potter._ The lights are back on, she realises, and the train was once again lurching drunkenly along. She isn’t in the chamber anymore. She lets out a sigh of relief. 

“Harry!” Hermione and Ron exclaim as one, and half-dragged her upright, until she was seated on the roughly carpeted carriage floor.

“What- who-” Her mouth is dry as a bone, and she feels like she’s on the edge of tears, and she doesn’t know why.

“Easy, easy-” A voice she doesn’t know says. Her eyes take a while to locate the source of the sound, and strain to focus on the face of the professor. “You’ve had quite an ordeal.”

“Ordeal?” Harry said weakly. Arms that she quickly identify as her best friend’s help her to sit up, but she still can’t help feel a little unsteady despite Ron and Hermione’s steadying presences either side of her. “What happened?”

“A dementor happened,” Lupin said grimly, “one of the guards of Azkaban.” He pressed something cold and hard into Harry’s palm, and she only realised it was a slab of chocolate when it began to melt a little in her fingers. “Eat that, it’ll help.”

Harry did, and to her surprise she felt warmth flood through her.

“Why- why was that thing-”

“It was looking for Sirius Black,” the man said, “but why it was on the train I have no idea. But it’s gone now, don’t worry.”

Harry breathed. She looked into Ron and Hermione’s fuzzy faces as Lupin muttered something about going to talk to the driver. Harry hadn’t even known there was a driver - perhaps it was a new addition after last years automated train didn’t twig that there was something wrong with hundreds of students going missing. “Did you- either of you-”

“Not as bad as you,” Hermione said gently, “but it was awful. I felt like I’d never be happy again.”

“No kidding,” Ron joked, but his voice was too thin to convince Harry that he hadn’t felt exactly the same way, “she almost broke my hand.”

* * *

Dementors, Harry decides, are actually worse than basilisks. At least basilisks won’t make you suffer - a blink of those big yellow eyes, and you’re gone, one way or another. But dementors… are an altogether much nastier beast.

Harry had figured from Ron and Hermione’s description of the spell Lupin used to expel the dementor from the train that it was the same one that Snape had used at the end of last year to send a message to Professor McGonagall to alert her to Harry and Ginny’s reappearance. With her admittedly vague recollection of the incantation, Hermione still managed to locate it in the library with formidable speed. Harry wondered if all their researching last year had actually made Hermione even more skilled at administrating and organising. It was a scary thought.

 _"This ancient and mysterious charm conjures a magical guardian, a projection of all your most positive feelings. The Patronus Charm is difficult, and many witches and wizards are unable to produce a full, corporeal Patronus, a guardian which generally takes the shape of the animal with whom they share the deepest affinity. You may suspect, but you will never truly know what form your Patronus will take until you succeed in conjuring it._ " Hermione read from a NEWT level charms text, _“It is most commonly used to defend against Dementors and Lethifolds (to which there is no other known defence), as well as having a secondary use to send highly confidential messages that cannot be stolen or misdirected, and are confirmed as coming from one particular person as a spirit animal cannot be mimicked or transfigured. The Patronus charm is incredibly difficult due to the large amount of magical energy required to produce a corporal animal form, and the requirement for a truly pure, happy memory.”_

“A happy memory?” Harry asked, frowning, “Why’d you need a memory? I’ve never heard of spells needing anything except the intent for them to succeed.”

Hermione looked imperiously over the book with an expression that said _I was about to tell you, so shut up._

“ _A happy memory_ ,” she continued with a roll of her eyes, “ _is required in order to summon up the lightest magic a wizard or witch possesses - anything less than a thought of true and complete elation will not produce the patronus, as the purest magic is hidden the deepest. This is why many dark witches and wizards, no matter how much power they possess, are incapable of the patronus charm - their magic has been corrupted by the dark, and none of this purity remains. If the patronus charm is attempted by a powerful but unworthy wizard, it is a well known phenomena that maggots will shoot out of the caster’s wand instead of the animal guardian, and with eat the caster alive, thus the hesitation from many grey wizards to attempt the spell, because of the disastrous consequences if the guardian judges you to be deficient by unknown criteria. The earlier in life the patronus charm is learned, the more likely it is that this pure light magic will not be polluted over the course of a lifetime, so it is safer to learn it in adolescence. However it is not unheard of somebody to lose the ability to cast a patronus after a catastrophic event in their life, for example, after the death of a soulmate.”_

“Sounds heavy,” Ron muttered, “I thought this study group was going to be, you know, brushing up on the basics, not skipping several years ahead.

“It’s not that many years, Ronald,” Hermione said, in a way that only Hermione could, “and we’re doing this first because the entire castle is _surrounded_ by dementors. Which can, as I think _even you_ may have noticed, can go for anyone at anytime for no reason whatsoever!" 

“Shh!” Madam Pince hissed from her desk. The woman’s hearing was incredible.

“I might not even be able to do it,” Harry said glumly.

“Why not?” Hermione asked, “You definitely have the power. And you’re not a dark witch.”

“It says right there that some people are literally incapable because of the death of their soulmate. Is it such a stretch that because of _him,”_ she waved her hand over her wrist where _Avada Kedavra_ was written beneath the ribbon she always wore, “and the whole history between us where he’s attacked me, tried to kill me and I’ve partially succeeded in killing him or at the very least banishing him-”

“He does _not_ define you,” Hermione snapped, cutting Harry off. “We are doing this, and that’s final. It was only an example of somebody losing the ability after the death of someone they love, not of somebody being unable because of their negative relations with their soulmate.”

“I just,” Harry looked down at the table so she didn’t have to look at either of her friends, “I don’t _have_ what most people have.”

“Nah, mate,” Ron said, voice full of false levity, and he slipped his hand over hers to give it a quick squeeze, “you’ve got better than that. You’ve got _us.”_

* * *

“You, boy, is your grandmother quite well?” 

Neville paled across the classroom at Trelawney’s question. Harry looked around the room nervously, wondering if anyone else was feeling distinctly unimpressed by their new Divination professor. Next to her, Hermione looked perplexed, and was staring at the bug-like woman, as if willing her to suddenly start making a measure of sense.

“I- I think so.” Neville said, swallowing.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Trelawney said ominously. The boy gulped. Harry couldn’t help the pang of sympathy she felt, even though she knew that he wouldn’t appreciate it - Neville was like her, almost entirely alone. But whilst she had Ron and Hermione - she categorically refused to include the Dursleys in her mental tally of her family - Neville had his grandmother. Well, no, she thought to herself - that wasn’t _quite_ true. Neville had Hannah Abbott as well, a good-natured Hufflepuff with the words _‘Oh! You’re the one!’_ scrawled on her wrist. But it still came even in the end - two for two.

And Harry knew all too well what it was like to have those life lines cut away. For her friend’s sake, she hoped that Trelawney was wrong.

Professor Trelawney continued placidly, as if she hadn’t just implied that Neville’s grandmother would be struck down by some invisible illness soon. "We will be covering the basic methods of Divination this year. The first term will be devoted to reading the tea leaves. Next term we shall progress to palmistry. By the way, my dear," she shot suddenly at Parvati, "beware a red-haired man."

Ron wasn’t in this class, the lucky sod, but Harry felt like he’d have laughed if he had been. Parvati shot a searching glance at Hermione, his soulmate and thus his immediate proxy in the classroom, as if to say _what is your red-haired man going to do to me?_

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"In the second term," Professor Trelawney went on, "we shall progress to the crystal ball - if we have finished with fire omens, that is. Unfortunately, classes will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of flu. I myself will lose my voice. And before Christmas, we shall lose at least one of our number forever.”

Now everyone in the classroom, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, was staring at Trelawney with round eyes, as if just waiting for her to burst out laughing and say ‘kidding!’ But she didn’t. 

By the time that they had all drained their cups of tea, Trelawney had indirectly hinted at five tragedies coming in the future, but with very little specifics save for Neville smashing his teacup, something that any idiot could predict if they knew Neville’s reputation for clumsiness. “I’m not sure she knows what she’s talking about,” Harry said to Hermione in a low voice as she persevered through sipping up the last of her green tea, “or if she does, I don’t get it.”

Instead of replying, Hermione slid her teacup and saucer over to Harry, and pulled Harry’s over to her in return. “At least this is more concrete than the Inner Eye,” she said frankly, cracking open her copy of _Unfogging the Future_ to reference the various shapes tea leaves could take.

Harry shrugged, and did the same. Hermione’s tea leaves looked like several blobs to her, but if she tilted her head in a certain way she could see what looked like a rather wonky flower. “I guess it could be a pansy,” she said to herself as she scanned the symbols in her book, “that means you’ll have faithful friends and happy days- oh, bugger, but if it look at it _this_ way it looks more like a egg cup. So… an escape from a disaster. I mean, it could be both-”

Harry was cut off by Hermione grabbing for her cup, the curiosity clearing getting too much for her nosy friend. She held it away from her at arm's length, and then closer again. “I don’t see a pansy.”

“No, look,” Harry said, leaning over the table, “that’s the stalk, and there are the leaves-”

“Really, that could be any flower, and you said yourself the stalk could be the neck of an egg cup-”

“Ladies,” Professor Trelawney had somehow creeped up on them as they were both leaning over Hermione’s teacup. Harry jumped. Trelawney’s eyes fixed on Harry’s abandoned teacup. “A little too difficult?” She crooned.

Hermione’s cheeks flared red. She looked like she was about to put her foot in her mouth, so Harry stepped in and said “Yes, professor. We’re not quite sure. Could you help us?” She can already feel her good-girl smile pasting onto her face. Just like riding a bicycle (or so she hears - she never learned. Neither Petunia or Vernon wanted to take time out of their busy lives to teach the freak how to cycle, and they were never going to get her a bike anyway). You never forget.

Preening, Trelawney scooped up Harry’s cup while Hermione’s sat back down on her cushion sulkily. No sooner had the Divination professor picked it up did she let out a loud, theatrical gasp. “The falcon, my dear,” she said, shaking her head sorrowfully, “you have a deadly enemy.”

Apparently unable to bite her tongue any longer, Hermione snapped: “Well of course she does, everyone knows about You-Know-Who.”

Harry was not the only one to stare at Hermione in amazement at that. For all that Ron’s influence had definitely been making her less reliant on books and authority figures, Harry had never heard Hermione speak like that to a teacher before. And on her behalf? Harry felt something in her chest go all warm and fuzzy.

Rather put out, Trelawney returned to examining the teacup with a superior sniff. It reminded Harry a little bit of Myrtle, the ghost that she’d struck up an unlikely friendship with the year before.

"The club...an attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup…” _No_ , Harry thought as she knotted her fingers up in her lap. _It isn’t, is it?_ She has a horrible thought for a moment that Trelawney will read something about Tom Riddle in her cup, but she pushes the fear down. The symbols are vague, they can’t even specify between a lover and a soulmate, let alone nailing down who your soulmate was. Oblivious to Harry’s inner turmoil, Trelawney continued dreamily “The skull...danger in your path, my dear..."

Everyone was staring, transfixed now, at Professor Trelawney, who gave the cup a final turn, gasped, and then screamed. Despite herself, Harry jumped. Neville dropped his cup - his second broken one of the day. Professor Trelawney sank into a vacant armchair, her glittering hand at her heart and her eyes closed.

Harry and Hermione’s eyes met at the same moment.

"My dear girl - my poor, sweet girl - no - it is kinder not to say - no - don't ask me…”

That sounded fair enough to Harry, but of course the moment that Trelawney said as much did Lavender pipe up: “What did it say, miss?”

Harry sent the blonde girl a glare which she annoyingly didn’t seem to notice. Everyone had got to their feet, and slowly they crowded around Harry and Hermione’s table, pressing close to Professor Trelawney's chair to get a good look at Harry's cup.

"My dear," Professor Trelawney's huge eyes opened dramatically, "you have the Grim."

Harry had a feeling that that was supposed to mean something to her. "The what?" asked Harry.

She could tell that she wasn't the only one who didn't understand; Dean shrugged at her and Codnor looked puzzled, but nearly everybody else clapped their hands to their mouths in horror.

"The Grim, my dear, the Grim!" cried Professor Trelawney, who looked shocked that Harry hadn't understood. "The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear girl, it is an omen - the worst omen - of death!" 

Harry blinked once, twice. “I found a big dog during the summer,” she said slowly, “could the Inner Eye be a bit confused and have swapped that with the Grim by accident?”

Hermione put her face in her hands and her back shook, not from despair as most of the class probably thought, but from silent laughter.

Trelawney, in the meantime, surveyed Harry with growing dislike. "You'll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future."

Harry shrugged. Seamus squatted down and peered into the cup that Trelawney still held. “It looks like a Grim if you do this," he said, with his eyes almost shut, "but it looks more like a donkey from here," he said, leaning to the left.

Trelawney, as if suddenly realising she had an audience - or perhaps, more specifically, an increasingly sceptical audience - shooed everyone back to their seats.

“I don’t think I like this lesson,” Harry said to Hermione in a low tone, “might switch to Muggle Studies to be with Ron and you. Bet I could owl-order the textbook from Flourish and Blotts if I send off for it tonight.”

“Trelawney might be happy,” Hermione replied, “it’d make her right about one thing, even if it’s not about your imminent death.”

Harry cocked her head to the side in askance.

“ _At least one of our number will leave us forever,”_ Hermione mimicked the teacher, complete with the feathery hand movements and quivering bottom lip.

“I prefer that to mean I quit the class rather than my horrible death,” Harry said with a nod. “Lets go find McGonagall. I’m sure we can catch her before Transfiguration.”

* * *

“You _quit?”_  

“Yep.”

“But Harry- Divination’s so important!” Parvati said, Lavender nodding on the next bed over, “And Trelawney’s the granddaughter of _Cassandra Trelawney,_ the famous seer! I mean, just because of that whole _Grim_ thing-”

“She predicted me a violent and bloody death,” Harry said shortly. “Why would I want to stick around with that hanging over me? Plus, McGonagall said that Trelawney predicts a death every year, and nobody has died yet.”

“McGonagall doesn’t _believe-”_

“And neither do I,” Harry replied. “Muggle studies will be easy for me, anyway - I grew up in the muggle world.”

“You shouldn’t just take the class because you think it’ll be easy-” Hermione faintly scolded from through the bathroom door.

“I’m not!” Harry raised her voice so that she could be sure Hermione would hear, “You and Ron will be there. I’m taking it because of you two _and_ because it’ll be easy. I can’t understand why you’re staying in Divination - you clearly think it’s a pile of troll’s brains as well-”

“It is not!” Parvati snapped in an equally loud voice, “My mum got her future predicted when she was eighteen, and the Seer said she’d meet the man she’d marry in six months. _That_ was right! She and my dad met six months later exactly!”

“Parvati, your parents had an arranged marriage. Their meeting wasn’t exactly _spontaneous-_ ”

“Yes, but there had been other suitors, but mum was only introduced to dad after six months of failed meetings with other families, and she said when she saw him she just _knew-”_

“Haven’t you ever heard of a self fulfilling prophecy?” Harry shot back, “You say something is going to happen, and because you said it, it happens. Like with Neville and the teacup - she scared the life out of him with that stuff about his grandma, and then said he would break the cup - if she hadn’t said that, he probably wouldn’t have been so nervous and he wouldn’t have dropped it!”

“My parents-”

“I’m sure they’re very happy, but they would have met anyway, Parvati. They were in the same caste in magical Indian society, sooner or later it would have happened. She was probably not receptive to any suitors before the six month mark _because_ of the Seer’s prediction. And you said yourself your mum went when she was of age and it was expected for her to get married, plus they were soulmates, it was literally predetermined before their birth that they would definitely end up meeting-”

“But not when! Some people get married and have kids and only meet their soulmates when they’re like a hundred years old-”

The door of the room burst open. A very irate Angelina Johnson, prefect badge pinned to her disheveled robes, stood in the doorway. Her hair was halfway out of it’s braid, and spilled wildly over her shoulders. “I can hear you from two floors away!” She snapped. “Either shut up, or I will _make_ you shut up, I have a twelve inch essay for Flitwick tomorrow and I keep on writing nonsense about bloody Divination!”

“Sorry Angie,” Harry, Lavender and Parvati squeaked in unison.

“Also, Potter,” the older girl said, rounding on Harry and scowling at her, “if you die before we win the Quidditch cup, I will help Wood resurrect you _just_ to kill you again, then resurrect you to catch the bloody snitch! Am I clear?”

“As a bell,” Harry said.

She scanned the dorm one last time, her keen chaser’s eyes taking in each of the girl’s faces. “ _Quiet.”_ She said a final time, before slamming the door with more force than was strictly necessary.

Parvati was studying her fingernails with single minded intensity. Lavender leaned over the gap between their beds and gave her friend a poke. At the same moment, Hermione emerged from the bathroom in a fluffy white towel, and gave Harry one of her looks.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, “I just don’t like Divination. Or Divination how Trelawney teaches it. It doesn’t mean the whole subject is useless. I’m sure your parents really were fated to meet when they did.”

“I’m sorry I tried to force you to carry on,” Parvati said sullenly, crossing her arms, “I just think that Divination is super interesting. And you reminded me of Padma - we had a fight about our electives. She’s doing Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, and says that Divination and Care are stupid subjects, and we’ve _never_ done anything different to each other before.”

Harry grimaced in understanding. “She still sticking to Boot?”

“Like glue,” Parvati muttered, tears welling up in her eyes. “She never has time for me anymore. Sometimes I wish we were like Fred and George, you know? Soulmates. We’re identical twins too, but she just seems to want to put more distance between us where those two are just so close. And I don’t _mind_ Terry, really I don’t, but he’s just so…”

“Ravenclaw?” Lavender said sympathetically.

“Yeah,” the Indian girl replied thickly, “Mum and Dad love him, of course, because he wants to be an Unspeakable and keeps on getting O’s in everything and his parents have money, and then they look at me, and I just don’t _have_ anyone yet, and I don’t know when or why or who-”

From that, Harry guessed that Parvati had incredibly vague or common soul words. Her heart panged with sympathy. Lavender pulled Parvati into a hug. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” the blonde girl said sadly, “or, at least, that it had gotten that bad. Why don’t you talk to Padma?”

“And say what?” Parvati wailed, “I don’t like her spending all her time with her soulmate? That makes _me_ the asshole. I just- when we were kids, I always thought that we’d always be as close as we were then - we were identical, we did everything together. But now… it started with the Sorting, when she went to Ravenclaw and I went to Gryffindor. And I feel that with every year that passes, we’re just becoming so _different,_ and I hate it.”

Hermione, still a bit damp, joins Lavender’s embrace of Parvati, and Harry joins in a second later. The black haired girl begins to cry. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you, Harry, I’m sorry. It’s just… divination played such a big role in my parents meeting each other. And I hoped- I always hoped that it would do the same for me. It’s stupid.”

“No it’s not,” Harry said, and her mind goes back, back to when she had dreamed of having a soulmate, of having somebody that could be everything to her. If somebody had tried to take those dreams away from her- she would have reacted even worse than Parvati did. She goes to her bed, and has a nightmare about somebody with her own face taking Ron and Hermione away from her.

The next morning, mind still stuck on her dream, Harry’s eyes follow the dark head of Padma Patil as she sits at the Ravenclaw table beside the brown haired Terry Boot. She chats with him, and him exclusively, and doesn’t look over to the Gryffindor table once, even as Parvati glances up hopefully from time to time when her conversation with Lavender halts as the other girl eats.

For all the time that Harry had known Ron and Hermione, they had both already met their soulmate, no matter how much that had been a source of contention in the beginning. And as their bond grew, she had found a comfortable space inside of it for herself.

But Parvati- Parvati had known Padma since birth, since they were both little girls with the same faces and the same parents and the same experiences. And then- then she lost her. Like a limb was just cut away without any warning.

Harry will never think of Parvati as silly again.

* * *

Ron is, at the very least, overjoyed to hear that Harry will be joining him and Hermione in Muggle Studies. The first lesson, which she had missed, had apparently been rather challenging for the pureblood.

“I just felt so _dumb,_ you know?” Ron said in a low voice as they walked towards Hagrid’s hut where their Care of Magical Creatures lesson would be taking place. Harry knew exactly who was in her class by the squirming books they were all holding, which were bound shut with various kinds of rope, leather, belts and in one memorable occasion, a metal vice.

"Why?” Harry asked with a frown, “Everyone’s starting at the same time.”

“Not really,” Ron said, “I think I was the only person there who hadn’t been in the muggle world. It’s mostly halfbloods or muggleborns, and they all knew what a mikowave and a fellytone and a wower were used for-”

 Harry grimaced in sympathy. She couldn’t imagine being forced to try and name standard wizarding household items in front of a class full of wizardborns. Ron looked gloomy at the memory. “What about Hermione? Couldn’t she help you?”

“I didn’t want to ask her,” Ron mumbled, “you know how she feels about copying.”

Harry twisted her lips. She didn’t think this was exactly the same situation of duplicating a potions essay that she and Ron hadn’t bothered to do, but she could see that Ron’s pride was severely wounded. “Well,” she said, “I know what all those things are. So we can work together. There’s bound to be tons of animals in Care that everyone but me knows.”

Ron brightened up. “Yeah, that’d be great. You sure you don’t mind?”

“Course not,” Harry said wryly, bumping shoulders with Ron as they reached the exterior of Hagrid’s hut, where a fair number of third years were thronged. The half-giant himself was greeting people happily, with a large smile stretched across his ruddy face. Harry looked around, but couldn’t catch sight of Hermione yet. Hagrid clapped his hands together, and the quiet buzz of chatter died down to a lesser level.

“Righ’!” the large man announced jovially, “Firs’ things first’, I am Professor Hagrid, and this is Care o’ Magical Creatures. Before we go into the forest to see the animals, I wanna make one thing very clear - we will be studyin’ some dangerous creatures, so you need ta’ keep ya wits about yer. If ya pay attention ta me and follow precautions, nothin’ is gon happen. All the animals you are gon see are beautiful, beautiful creatures, and will be treated wi’ respect. Like Professor Kettleburn before me, I reserve the right to remove any of yous from my class if I think you are putting yerself and others at risk through carelessness. Understood?”

Harry nodded, along with the rest of the class. At the corner of her eye, she saw a couple of Slytherin girls rolling their eyes, and ground her teeth. Oblivious, Hagrid beamed. “Well then! Time ta get a move on! Shouldn’ need ter be said that you are _only_ ta enter the forest under professor supervision, and not ter stray from the path.”

The large man set off, his colossal boarhound padding along at his side, and the class thinned out into a line as they walked towards the forest. “Bit useless calling it forbidden if we can go in for lessons,” Harry muttered to Ron. Ron opened his mouth to reply, when someone else beat him to it.

“It’s still forbidden to the students outside of lessons,” Hermione said at her other side. Harry jumped, and almost dropped _The Monster Book of Monsters,_ which made a bid for freedom which was quickly dashed both by the tightly buckled belt that Harry had fastened around it, and by the fact she caught it before her grip loosened.

“When’d you get here!” Harry cried, a little louder than she meant to.

Hermione looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “I’ve been standing next to you for the last five minutes!”

“Oh,” Harry managed, “sorry. Didn’t see you.”

“Did you hear Hagrid’s speech?” Ron asked from Harry’s otherside, “If you didn’t, it’s okay. He basically just said to not be an idiot, use common sense, and stay on the path.”

Hermione didn’t commit to anything but a nod. They spent the rest of the walk in a comfortable silence, which was ended by a moment of unintentional hilarity from Neville who lost control of his textbook, and had to chase it as it bit itself away. Hagrid turned round at the laughter and shouts of the class, and with a lightning quick reflex, stamped on the book with his foot and pinned it to the ground. “What’re ya doing?” He asked a panting Neville.

“The book-” Neville began, “it jumped- it’s been terrible all throught the hols-”

“Yer just need to _stroke it,”_ Hagrid said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He bent over and yanked the book from under his foot. It tried to bite at him, but Hagrid didn’t even flinch. He ran a single finger down the sign of the book, and the tome seemed almost to sigh before going still and falling open.

“Right,” a condescending voice came from the back of the crowd, “how _foolish_ of us not to _stroke a book.”_ Draco Malfoy rolled his eyes as he yanked a rope-bound text from his satchel.

Hagrid went a bit pink, and he looked around at the rest of the group, and for the first time seemed to notice the tight bags, binder clips and belts that held the rest of the class’ books shut. “Hasn' - hasn' anyone bin able ter open their books?" said Hagrid, looking crestfallen.

As one, the group shook their heads.

Harry shot a glare at Malfoy. It wasn’t so much that his question had been _wrong_ , but it was the way in which he said it. Malfoy, when he caught her nasty look, simply raised his chin and sniffed imperiously. “Git,” Harry muttered to herself. At his side, Pansy Parkinson returned her glare as if she was personally responsible for defending the blond boy’s honour.

Despite the shaky start, the lesson picked up when Hagrid led out the first creatures into the paddock. The creatures that emerged from the woods had the bodies, hind legs, and tails of horses, but the front legs, wings, and heads of what seemed to be giant eagles, with cruel, steel-colored beaks and large, brilliantly orange eyes. The talons on their front legs were half a foot long and deadly looking. Each of the beasts had a thick leather collar around its neck, which was attached to a long chain, and the ends of all of these were held in the vast hands of Hagrid, who came jogging into the paddock behind the creatures.

“Boo’iful, aren’t they?” Hagrid said proudly, “Hippogriffs. They’re very popular creatures, particularly among the fancy breeders. This one ‘eres called Buckbeak,” Hagrid was saying as he tossed a large piece of fish in the air, which was caught in a flash by the white animal at the front of the pack, all the others wandering further back, “‘E’s the youngest of the juveniles, and that makes ‘im the easiest to approach. Don’t get me wrong; hippogriffs are proud creatures, an’ if you wanna approach them, you’ve gotta keep that in mind. Offendin’ a hippogriff is the las’ thing wizards a lot older and wiser than yeh lot ‘ave ever done.”

Hagrid’s speech had led to a little uneasiness that quickly dissipated as the gamekeeper demonstrated how to approach. “If yeh wann a keep all yeh limbs, yeh _always_ wait fer the hippogriff terr make the first move. It’s polite, yeh see? Yeh walk towards ‘im, like so, and yeh bow, lower the better, an’ yeh wait.” Hagrid didn’t have to wait even five seconds before the hippogriff lowered it’s head. “Good boy, Buckbeak!” The half-giant praised him, before turning back to the class. “See how he returned the bow? If he does that, yeh’re all good to approach ‘im. If he doesn’t bow… get away from ‘im sharpish, ‘cause those talons hurt. Now- who wants to try approachin’ him?”

Harry realised too late that everyone else in the class had stepped backwards, leaving her at the front of the pack. She swallowed nervously, and braced herself.

* * *

Despite her nerves, approaching, petting and finally flying Buckbeak had been one of the best moments of Harry’s life. She knew she liked flying, but on the back of a living being, going at twice the speed of her Nimbus Two Thousand? It was incredible.

Once she touched down, unhurt and grinning madly, the class seemed to relax and began approaching the small herd. Buckbeak stayed by Harry’s side, and allowed both Ron and Hermione to approach after staring at them very hard for several long moments. Even Malfoy seemed to be game, or at least seemed determined to do what Harry had. Seeing the pureblood scion bowing to a creature was another highly enjoyable sight, and she had done her best to commit it to memory. 

For about five, ten minutes, everything seemed to have calmed, and settled. And then Pansy Parkinson, apparently fed up with being ignored by Malfoy and being shown up by Harry, stepped into the paddock and barked at one of the hippogriffs, who had been contentedly petted by Daphne Greengrass at the back of the cleared area, like one of the pugs she so closely resembled.

“Well, you big, ugly brute,” she said in her high, nasal voice, “you’re not dangerous at all, are you? No, you’re just a big bird with four legs, and as lethal as a-”

“Pansy-” The elder Greengrass girl had gone pale as she realised what her housemate was saying, “You really shouldn’t-”

“I’ll say whatever I like,” the teenager snapped, “it’s not like the stupid things can understand me, can they? Daddy always said that all dumb beasts are the same, just need a firm voice-”

Mr Parkinson was proved irrefutably wrong when the hippogriff ran at the girl. Hagrid shot across the paddock with surprising speed for a man his size, and managed to pull Pansy, who had frozen at the sight of a charging hippogriff, out of the way. Mostly.

“My arm!” She screeched, and Hagrid dropped her unceremoniously to the leafy ground so that he could crowd the furious animal, speak in soft, calming tones. The leaves beneath where Parkinson lay were turning red. Harry snapped out of her shocked stupor at the same time as the rest of the class, when they realised that it could have very easily been Pansy Parkinson’s neck and not her arm that was now gushing blood. Daphne Greengrass’ hands were clapped over her mouth in horror, and Malfoy was very pale, and was backing away from the mostly unruffled hippogriff at his side as slowly as he could.

With Hagrid still diverted by calming the irate animal, a surprising person stepped forward. Hermione’s face had gone incredibly serious, and she was rifling around in her bag, before pulling out a light purple potion and kneeling beside the injured girl. “Get away from me, Granger!” Pansy snapped, probably more out of instinct than anything, but Hermione ignored her.

“Hold your arm still,” she said clearly, and unstoppered the bottle, “this needs to cover as much of the wound as possible.”

Harry found herself moving forward. “Hermione, I don’t think you should-” _be doing that,_ was how she was going to finish, but Hermione cut of her off.

Her friend didn’t even look in her direction as she replied. “This is a quick acting skin graft potion,” she said, and with no warning began drizzling it liberally over Parkinson’s torn skin. The girl on the ground hissed with pain, but didn’t say anything else, too focused on gritting her teeth. “It will stop the blood loss long enough for her to get to Madam Pomfrey.”

By the time Hagrid had managed to calm the hippogriff, and herd the rest of the flock back into the wider forest, Parkinson had managed to sit up under her own strength. “Les’ get yer ta Madam Pomfrey,” Hagrid said, and went to pick up Parkinson. The Slytherin girl flinched away.

“I can walk,” she said, her eyes wide, but when she stood up she went as white as a sheet. Daphne Greengrass ended up looping Parkinson’s uninjured around around her shoulders, and helping her stagger off.

The lesson ended early.

* * *

“How did you know?” Harry asked Hermione as soon as the two of them entered their empty dorm, later the same day.  

“Know what?” Hermione replied, carefully blank.

“Don’t lie to me,” Harry snapped, “you knew that something was going to happen. You don’t just carry around skin graft potions for no reason.”

“I just thought, because Care is meant to be quite dangerous, it wouldn’t hurt-”

“Hermione,” Harry said in a low voice, “please. Don’t lie to me.”

Hermione thinned her lips, but didn’t keep on talking. “I just knew,” she said finally, “please, trust me, Harry. Nothing bad would have happened with Hagrid there-”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Hermione, I love Hagrid. I do. But we both know that he couldn’t have done even half of what you did.”

Hermione averts her eyes. “It’s not my secret to tell,” she said finally, “but… I just knew that someone would be hurt in the lesson. And I knew that Hagrid needed to have complete plausible deniability. So… I went over there this morning, before the lesson. Told him he should give a proper safety talk and warnings so that there was no way anyone could say they hadn’t been warned. I didn’t even know if anything _would_ happen after I did that, but I brought the potion just in case.”

Harry’s mind was racing, trying to find an explanation. “Are you… are you like a seer?” She asked quietly, “Like Trelawney’s grandmother?”

Hermione let out a snort of laughter. “ _Definitely_ not.”

Harry bit her nails. “Does Ron know?” She didn’t think she could bear it if her two best friends were colluding to keep a secret from her. To her relief, Hermione shook her head.

“Nobody knows except me,” Hermione said, “and I had to promise that nobody else would know.”

Harry bit the inside of her lip, worrying over it. “Okay,” she said finally, “okay.”

Hermione pulled her into a tight hug. “I promise, I wouldn’t keep anything from you if I had a choice. I mean, I’m not even supposed to be telling you that there _is_ anything different. But you’re my best friend Harry.”

 _You’re my best friend._ Harry couldn’t help the smile that spread on her face.

“What about Ron?”

“Ron is my soulmate,” Hermione said, “my other half, apparently. I love him.” At the look on Harry’s face she rushed to add: “Eugh, no! Not like that! Not yet, anyway. I love him the way I love you. I probably always will love him, even if the way I do changes over time. But me and him - we’re so different. He’s a pureblood, and a boy, and only applies himself - really applies himself - when he’s playing chess, of all things. But me and you… me and you are different. You’re the first friend I ever had, Harry. And the best.”

Harry’s throat almost closed up with tears. “Same,” she managed in a rasp, before burying her face in Hermione’s shoulder.

* * *

Pansy Parkinson spent the night in the hospital wing, but was back in the Great Hall by breakfast, looking no worse for wear. She heard from Lavender and Parvati, her closest links to the Hogwarts gossip network, that Mr Parkinson had wanted to press charges against Hagrid and the hippogriff that charged her (who was apparently called Stormswift) but the girl had convinced him not to. She did, however, drop Care and started Arithmancy instead, a decision that Harry could completely support. 

There was one other change. A few days after the events of Care, the Slytherin girl walked over to the Gryffindor table in the morning, where Hermione, Ron and Harry were having a lively debate about what the exact function of a rubber duck actually was (Ron’s dad had been sending him questions everyday ever since he found out that his youngest son was taking Muggle Studies, and Ron in turn usually asked his muggle raised friends the answer), and sat down. The three of them fell quiet, more shocked than anything to see the pureblood girl at the Gryffindor table. And they weren’t the only ones that noticed - eyes from all over the Great Hall were boring into Pansy’s back. It wasn’t unusual for students from different houses to drop by the other house tables from time to time - it was, however, unusual for students from Slytherin to visit Gryffindor table, and vice versa. Harry was immediately on her guard.

“‘Lo, Pansy,” Ron was the first to speak, smiling tightly at the third year Slytherin, a warning in his blue eyes, “what brings you here?”

Pansy took a deep breath, and locked eyes with Hermione. “I owe you,” she said quietly, so that only the three of them could hear her, although there were doubtless a few straining ears trying to eavesdrop, “I know that if you hadn’t been there it could have been a lot worse when that- that _beast_ attacked me. I wanted to thank you.”

Hermione blinked. Harry could understand her confusion. Pansy had never spoken to her like this before - it had always been _Granger, mudblood_ or _know-it-all._ “You’re... welcome?” Hermione’s response sounded more like a question than an answer.

Pansy nodded tightly. She looked incredibly uncomfortable. “If there is anything I can do for you - anything at all - just ask.” Her piece said, she turned on her heel and flounced back to the other side of the hall in what Harry would call a full retreat if they were on a battlefield (and it felt, sometimes, like they were).

Hermione blinked again.

“What just happened?” She asked Harry and Ron.

“Parkinson owes you,” Ron said, sounding strangely satisfied, “she knows it, and everyone in Care knows it too. I don’t doubt she would have tried to pretend she didn’t if there weren’t so many witnesses.”

“But what does that mean?” Hermione asked, “She owes me? I have a feeling she doesn’t mean a favour like I do.”

Ron nodded “You’re right. It’s a pureblood thing - even we know about it, and we’re blood traitors. The idea is, each pureblood family has their own honour and reputation. They gain repute by being either vassal houses to more powerful lines, or as overlords to those less powerful. The Parkinsons are vassals to the Malfoys, like the Crabbes and the Goyles. Unlike the Crabbes and the Goyles, the Parkinsons are a Noble family. That puts them above normal pureblood families, like the Weasleys or Greengrasses, who are independent, or the Crabbes and Goyles, which are non-Noble vassals, but below Noble and Ancient families like the Malfoys. You following?”

Harry and Hermione nodded hesitantly, and exchanged a look that reassured the other that they weren’t _really_ following. Ron continued, oblivious to just how complex this would seem to his muggle-raised friends: “Right, so that title of Noble? That’s _earned._ By a lot of things. Money, property, age, position, and _favours_. The title affords them certain privileges: invitations to important gatherings, a seat on the Wizengamot, things like that. But it can be lost if they don’t keep up the requirements for it; for example, if they lost all their money, a large proportion of their members died, their head lost his or her positions - their Noble status might be stripped, and granted to another more ‘worthy’ house. That rival house would gain their title, their seat on the Wizengamot, sometimes even some of their property and land - it’s the worst thing that can happen to a pureblood family, essentially. And everyone is looking to bring down a Noble family, because they know that their family could benefit. So when you helped Pansy, there were a lot of purebloods there that aren’t from noble families - and that want to be. Your helping her incurred a debt on honour on her side. That means, if she didn’t formally acknowledge the debt she owed, and make an offer to repay it, her family’s reputation would suffer.”

“So… her coming over here… if she hadn’t done that, her family could lose their title?” Hermione said slowly, apparently grasping Ron’s meaning.

“Probably not from that alone, but it would definitely be a black mark against them. Especially because Malfoy was present. His father has the authority to strip the Parkinson’s rank, because he’s their Lord, and it couldn’t be ignored if they didn’t acknowledge the debt when their heir had seen it himself. It’s probably the same reason that Pansy told her father not to try and press charges - because she knew that Malfoy had seen Hagrid warning everyone, and the way she baited Stormswift. I mean, I guess they could go independent, like us, but it’s much harder to become or stay Noble without being a vassal to an Ancient house, because then the Wizengamot have to vote on your status, and getting that load of old todgers to agree on something is nigh on impossible, especially if it won't directly benefit them. However, independent families do have more choice in things like where you live or who your children marry - although that's mostly a formality at this point, because nobody really wants to offend somebody so mortally to break a match - so it depends what matters to you more. Vassals need to ask their patron’s permission for things like that.”

“I think I have a headache,” Harry said faintly, and stared woefully into her cereal.

“Why isn’t this written down anywhere!” Hermione cried, her eyes wide, “How was this not mentioned in any books?”

Ron shrugged. “I guess it’s something you just… _know_. It’s why nobody writes down what walking is. It’s just assumed that you know it.”

“That is _so_ backwards,” Hermione muttered angrily to herself, “it’s like the house elves all over again! Harry, did you know about this?”

Harry could truthfully shake her head. “Never heard of it, ‘Mione.”

Ron frowned. “Really?”

Harry looked at her male best friend a little warily. “Yes, _really_. I was raised by muggles, remember? Before I was eleven, I thought my parents had died in car crash.”

Ron’s ears went pink. “No, I didn’t mean you were lying- I meant, well, I was surprised because _you’re_ part of a Noble family. Or at least, you were.”

Now it was Harry’s time to blink in confusion. “Wait, what?”

“The Potters were, well, before you, a pureblood family. Really old as well, if not quite Ancient. They’d been Noble for generations.”

“ _What?”_

Ron nodded. “I’m pretty sure there was a Potter as Minister of Magic at one point. I think you probably lost your status though at the end of the last war, considering that there aren’t any other Potters left, other than you. Maybe you’ll get it back when you come of age? I think that has happened a couple of times before. The Longbottoms might be holding your Wizengamot seat - every Noble and Ancient family has more than one seat, to give away when necessary, and the Potters were vassals to the Longbottoms.”

Harry looked around the table, and spotted Neville a few seats away. “Longbottom, as in, _Neville_ Longbottom?”

Ron nodded. “They’re really powerful, but everything’s controlled by Neville’s grandmother at the moment. There’s four Ancient and Nobles houses in Britain right now - the Malfoys, the Longbottoms, the MacMillans and the- well, the Blacks.”

“The Blacks, like- like _Sirius Black?”_

“Yeah, but they’re pretty much extinct now! The only reason they’re still an Ancient and Noble house is because they’re richer than God,” Ron hurried to reassure her, “Sirius Black is the very last of the male line, and the female line is basically gone. There’s Bellatrix Lestrange, who’s in Azkaban, Narcissa Malfoy, whose claim was essentially consumed by the Malfoys-”

“Wait, Malfoy’s _mum_ is related to Sirius Black?”

“Everyone is related to everyone in pureblood circles,” Ron said frankly, “do you remember when we were looking into genealogy last year, looking for the heir? That was part of the reason it was so hard. Everyone intermarries. I’m pretty sure _you’re_ related to the Blacks as well.”

Suddenly, Harry knew exactly what he was talking about. She had been looking for proof that a dark person could have a light soulmate, and vice versa. And she had found it. _Charlus Potter and Dorea Black._ A light wizard and a dark witch.

“Oh my god,” she said, “oh my _god.”_

“I know what I need to ask Pansy for,” Hermione spoke for the first time in a while, obviously having been lost in thought.

“Already?” Ron asked, “You should know, these favours are a _big_ deal. You shouldn’t rush into it too quickly. You might never get another.”

“I know,” Hermione said confidently, before she flashes Harry and Ron a confident smile, “I’m sure. I’m going to ask her to give me lessons about wizarding society.”

* * *

“Don’t you think it’s pretty ironic that as you’re learning about Muggle culture, Hermione’s learning about wizarding culture?” Harry said to Ron as they were working on a Muggle Studies essay on the ways that muggles had found mundane solutions to problems that wizards could solve with magic - this particular essay was meant to focus on long distance travel.  

Harry had decided to focus on trains, as she knew that the Hogwarts Express was an example of the wizarding world adopting muggle methods - a very rare occurrence, considering that they were writing the essay with quills when biros were an incredible invention she really hadn’t appreciated before coming to Hogwarts. She’d decided to compare it to apparition, as it was good for a few hundred miles, but not overseas (the further the jump, the higher the risk of getting splinched).

Ron, on the other hand, had been utterly spellbound after he had found out exactly what aeroplanes were. “I thought they were birds when I saw them fly over our house,” he’d said to her, open mouthed, after the lesson when they were covered. “Really, really big birds.” Unsurprisingly, he was focusing on air travel versus portkeys- which did not carry the same risks of splinching that apparition did, but were very expensive and that you needed permits for.

Hermione, of course, had already finished her essay hours before, and had gone to attend one of her one-on-one tutoring sessions with Pansy Parkinson. Harry thought she had done broomsticks versus motorcycles - both small, single passenger vehicles that could go very fast and go long distances, but that exposed the traveller to the elements.

“I guess it is a bit odd,” Ron said, lifting his head up from his textbook, where the aeroplane section was already dogeared after less than a week of lessons, “but I shouldn’t be surprised. We need to learn about each other’s worlds, right? If this whole _thing_ is going to work.”

“Soulmate thing?” Harry clarified, her voice teasing.

“Shut up,” Ron said on instinct, before returning her grin, “Yeah, I guess. I know that just because someone is your soulmate, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to work on it. Mum and Dad always say they had to compromise with each other. And I want to- one day, I want to be like them, you know? Sickeningly in love and all that." 

“Ron,” Harry said seriously, “that was _adorable.”_

“I will kill you. Don’t think I won’t.”

* * *

Finally, it was Monday, and they were having their first Defence lesson of the year. The timetable was always a bit strange at the beginning of the year - September 1st that year had been on a Wednesday, so they hadn’t had any Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday lessons until the week following. 

“Do you think he’ll be any good?” Harry asked Ron and Hermione as they walked into the Defence classroom, which refreshingly was not covered with a thousand images of Lockhart’s smugly grinning face like the year before.

“I don’t think he can be any worse than Lockhart,” Ron said optimistically.

“Good point,” Hermione said, “plus, after two years of rubbish teachers - a man possessed by Lord Voldemort and a fraud - the rule of average means we should be getting somebody decent.”

“‘Mione,” Harry said seriously, “you are forgetting one very important thing. Bad defence teachers are now the _trend_.”

“Lupin did manage to drive off the dementor,” Hermione pointed out, “and we know that _Expecto Patronum_ is an incredibly complex charm from that book we found. From that we know from that alone, he’s not a dark wizard, because he wouldn’t have been able to do it if he was, and that he’s got a fair amount of power, so he won’t be another Lockhart.”

Harry shrugged, accepting the point. “I will withhold judgement,” she said decisively, “until after the lesson.”

At that moment, a smiling professor Lupin walked into the room, and behind him trundled a large wardrobe on rickety wheels that clearly had something inside by the thumping coming from within. Harry’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “If those are Cornish Pixies,” she said in a low voice to Hermione, “then I need you to stun me. I flat out refuse to deal with those blue devils again.”

To Harry’s relief, it was not Cornish Pixies. “A boggart,” Professor Lupin explained, after telling the class to get to their feet and get their wands out, which generated a fair degree of excitement, “is a shapeshifter, which will assume the form of a person’s worst fear. They like dark, enclosed spaces, like wardrobes or beneath beds, which in the muggle world has lead to them being known as a bogeyman, although muggles rarely see boggarts plainly, and instead assume them to be a figment of their imagination. Now, nobody knows exactly what a boggart looks like when it is alone - right now, it is just waiting to be released from the wardrobe, to assume a nightmare.”

The class were looking rather uneasy now. A few students that had been standing near the wardrobe backed away. Noticing this, Professor Lupin’s gentle smile grew. “A boggart, whilst it feeds off fear, is hurt by the simplest of remedies; laughter. Laughter is poisonous to a boggart, and is a surefire way to chase them off.”

Hermione’s hand shot up in the air. “Miss Granger?” Lupin said.

“How are we supposed to laugh at our worst fear?” She asked, with a hint of nervousness.

“That is what I am here to teach you,” Lupin said, “there are many ways to overcome a boggart in order to make it funny. If facing a boggart, it is a good idea not to do so alone - that way, the boggart is more likely to get confused. A boggart is confused when a person has more than one great fear, or when there are multiple people with different fears nearby. In an attempt to scare them all, the boggart can sometimes make itself not scary at all. For example, one person is afraid of a huge slug, the other of a headless corpse. The boggart might turn itself into a half slug - which is far more comical than terrifying.”

At her side, Harry couldn’t help but notice that Dean was doodling a half-slug on the back of his hand. She couldn’t help but grin at the little speech bubble coming from the slug’s antennae - _don’t step on me! Don’t step on me!_ Dean looked up to see her peering at his hand, and beamed when she shot him a thumbs up.

“When you are alone,” Lupin carried on, “and need to do away with a boggart, there is a spell specifically designed to force the boggart to transform into something you find funny, or ridiculous. That’s an easy way to remember the incantation, which is _Riddikulus._ The key thing about this spell is that you have a good focus and a strong image of what form you want to force the boggart to take. The incantation and wand movement - which goes like this, copy me, yes, that’s right - don’t do anything on their own. Now,” he said, clapping his hands together, “who wants to go first?”

When it became clear that nobody was going to volunteer, Lupin picked Neville to be the first to attempt the spell. Harry gave him an encouraging grin, whilst half expecting his dismal failure. She should have had more faith. Neville turned an imposing and menacing Professor Snape into a crossdresser on his very first try. When Neville, who had a not-entirely earned reputation of being a bit of a dunce, managed the spell, everyone relaxed and clamored to be the next to face the shapeshifter.

Dean made his zombie start trying to eat it’s own brain. Lavender’s mummy had all it’s bandages unravel. Seamus’ banshee lost her voice. Parvati’s was the first one to not be some kind of monster - for a second Harry didn’t realise what she was seeing. It was Parvati herself, stooped, grey-haired, and crying. The Indian girl recoiled, and Harry saw that the elderly woman was still wearing her ribbon around her wrist.

Parvati’s fear, Harry realised, was growing old alone.

And then- “Riddikulus!” Parvati screamed, and her older self became nothing more than a puppet dancing a jig on strings. Ron was up next - he went very pale as the puppet transformed, and Harry was half expecting it to turn into a spider, but instead it twisted into mountain troll. Not just any mountain troll, Harry realised. _The_ troll, from first year. And it’s club was covered with blood and gore, and a patch of frizzy brown hair.  _Hermione's_ hair. Ron's worst fear was not a mountain troll, Harry realised. It was letting Hermione down, and her getting hurt.

Harry thought for a moment Ron had frozen like she had at that moment, but he lifted his chin and roared “Riddikulus!” just like Parvati had.

Suddenly, the troll was shrinking, shrinking, until it was no more than the size of an ant, and Ron was grinning with relief. Hermione was next. Hers took longer to change than any of the others, and for a moment it looked like it might become Professor McGonagall - something that confused Harry greatly, as she knew how much Hermione looked up to their head of house - before settling as Hermione herself, her hands fading into nothingness, then her forearms, her biceps. “Terrible things-” The boggart began through a translucent mouth, but Hermione’s eyes were already hard and unforgiving. “Riddikulus!”

The boggart disappeared completely, condensed into little more than a mound of sand. In the corner of her eye, she could see Professor Lupin congratulating the others who had already succeeded as Harry stepped to the front of the queue. She gritted her teeth as the sand morphed and transformed. She couldn’t think of what shape the boggart would take, but when it stopped, she suddenly realised that there was no other shape it could have been.

Tom Riddle stood before her, scarlet eyed, still in his Slytherin uniform with his prefect badge. In his hand was a small, black book that Harry knew by sight. “Harriet Potter,” he said her name clearly, and he smiled, but his eyes were cold and dead.

“Ri-ridikk-” Her voice wasn’t working.

He was still looking at her, his gaze burning. The last time he looked at her like that-

“We are one soul in two,” he told her, smug, his eyes dancing with promised cruelty, “all you are is mine. Every memory, every thought in your pretty little head… I promised I would return for you, Harriet Potter, and I _keep_ my promises-" 

“ _Riddikulus!”_

For a moment, Harry thought somebody else had shouted, that Ron or Hermione had intervened. But then she realised it was her voice, her wand cutting through the air. And Tom Riddle was screaming, burning, sucked back into his diary-

Lupin stepped in front of her, pushing her away from the book. The boggart twisted again, changed into a hovering white orb. Almost lazily, Professor Lupin said “Riddikulus,” and the orb turned into a deflating white balloon, which shot back into the wardrobe. Lupin slammed the door shut behind it.

* * *

“Was that him?” Ron asked when they made it back to the common room.

“Yeah,” Harry said rawly, “yeah, that was him.”

Hermione wordlessly pulled Harry into a tight hug. “He’s gone,” she told her firmly, “He’s gone. You destroyed him.”

“I destroyed a memory of him,” Harry corrected her, “the real him… the real him is still out there.”

“The real him’s a ghost, or as good as,” Ron reminded her, “and Dumbledore said he was in Albania or something, didn’t he? As long as Dumbledore knows where he is, you’re safe. He can’t hurt you.”

“He said he’d come back for me,” Harry said quietly, staring into the flames of the hearth, “he meant it. When he saw my soulmark- he was so _angry,_ and he- I just _know._ I know that one day he’ll come back. And- and I don’t know what I’ll do. Because he told Quirrell to take me _alive._ And in the chamber - Riddle was just delaying me from finding Ginny before she died. He wanted me _alive._ I’d prefer it if he still wanted to kill me. At least I know what to do with that.”

“Then let’s make him pay for it,” Hermione said, taking Harry’s hand in hers, “let’s show him he can’t just delay you, can’t just stop you whilst he hurts people. Let’s make him wish he had never come back.”

“How?”

Hermione looked over Harry’s head, and Harry just knew that she and Ron were doing that thing they did sometimes, when they could talk with just their eyes. Silently, the two communicated with facial expressions whilst Harry worked to get her breathing under control. The discussion apparently over, Hermione squeezed Harry’s hands whilst Ron came round to crouch in front of her.

“We’re going to learn the Patronus charm."


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, the castle was abuzz with stories of Lupin’s boggart class. He hadn’t had the first and second years do it, because the _Riddikulus_ charm was technically a third year spell, but every other year had done - for the seventh years, it had been a bit of revision, as apparently the professor before Quirrell had done a similar exercise in _their_ third year, but for everyone else it was new.

Harry had decided to get into breakfast as early as she could, eat quickly and then disappear before she was noticed. It was a brilliant plan, with one gaping flaw: everybody else seemed to have had the same idea. At six in the morning, there were usually a few dozen students scattered across the Great Hall, and no more. That morning, Harry was faced with half of the Hogwarts population already in their seats. She bites her lip, and takes a deep breath before walking as nonchalantly as she could to the Gryffindor table, trying not to listen to the conversations around her, and failing.

“-you hear that Warrington’s afraid of his own father? I bet that he won’t be pleased when somebody let’s it slip, might even disinherit him-”

“-hey Wood! Wood! How can you be afraid of _heights_ when you’re a Quidditch player-”

“-Susan’s was awful - Death Eaters killed her entire family, you know-”

“-I heard that Parvati’s was herself, old and alone, just like Parkinson’s-”

Harry drops down onto the bench, half-relieved she hadn’t heard her own name, and half-horrified about the names she had. She shot a look at Wood under her eyelashes as she grabbed some toast from the middle of the table - her captain was hard-faced, knuckles white as he sawed his sausage in half with a single-minded intensity.

Before she can think better of it, she hisses his name. It takes a moment, but his head lifts, and his eyes soften somewhat when he realises it’s somebody he actually knows. “Potter,” he says with a shallow nod, “you holding up okay?”

He knows, she thinks somberly. Just because she hadn’t heard her own name, doesn’t mean she wasn’t discussed. But fair’s fair - she knows his now.

“Yeah. You?”

He swallows, and manages a tight smile. Harry lets him get back to his food as she lets the words of the other students wash over her like the tide. Wood isn’t afraid of heights, Harry knows this. If he was, he wouldn’t be able to get into the air, let alone eat, sleep and breathe Quidditch. Wood is probably more afraid of falling.

Considering how many Quidditch players have been permanently crippled from bad falls, she can understand that.

She tries to ignore the whispers all while keeping her ears pricked up for her own name as she eats. Despite her best efforts, the toast tastes like dust as she swallows.

With a huff, she reaches out and picks up three slices of toast in one hand, before standing up abruptly and walking as quickly as she can out of the Great Hall. She’s lost what little appetite she had, and she wants to intercept Parvati before she hears the whispers.

* * *

She makes it up to the dorm just in time, as Parvati has just finished plaiting her blue-black hair into an intricate braid. “Don’t go down there,” Harry gasps, doubled over from stitch, before thrusting the now cold toast at her roommate, “there’s a lot of talk...”

Parvati’s face hardens. She understands. Lavender worriedly begins to flutter around her as she too grasps Harry’s meaning, like some kind of yellow and pink bird. Awkwardness makes Harry want to flee before Parvati starts crying, or something equally awful, but she forces herself to stay. “Are you- will you be alright?” She finally manages, wincing at how stilted her voice is.

“I’m always alright,” Parvati replies - quickly, too quickly - before shooting Harry a wide smile that is so obviously fake it looks like it’s been drawn on, “Really, I’m fine. No need to worry or anything.”

The thing is, Harry knows she’s lying. But she doesn’t know how to make it better.

So she just says “Okay,” and flees the room before she puts her foot in it even more than she already has. When she comes out into the common room, Ron and Hermione are pacing in front of the fire, clearly waiting for her as both heads snap up when she calls out a greeting.

“Harry!” Hermione says, her eyes a little wild, “We thought we could go and see Hagrid for breakfast! We haven’t seen him outside of lessons yet this year, and-”

“I already went down,” she tells them, and her best friends deflate. “It was fine though,” she rushes to assure them, “I didn’t hear anyone talking about my boggart. It seems to have been forgotten about, thank Merlin-”

Ron winces when she says that.

“What?” Harry asks, not wanting to know the answer.

“Percy,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, “he told me last night that one of the Slytherin prefects had come to ask him about- about your boggart. Asked him if he knew anyone matching the description. Apparently they’d already talked to some of the other houses-”

Harry can feel the blood drain from her face. “And?” She hisses, eyes darting around the common room, looking for potential eavesdroppers.

“Well, of course none of them knew him,” Ron said quickly, trying to placate her, “and Percy told Farley that it wasn’t any of her business, so even if he did know he wouldn’t say anything anyway. But it looks like the Slytherins realised that- well, he was dressed in his school robes, with his prefect badge on. And he wasn’t a current prefect, or one from first or second year. So now-”

“They’re looking for him,” Harry finished bleakly, “great. Just great.”

“People have short memories,” Hermione jumped in anxiously, “they’ll forget all about it in a couple of days, if they haven’t already.”

“Or they’ll look,” Harry snaps back, “they’ll look like we looked last year. They’ll go through all the yearbooks, look at the Slytherin prefects, and sooner or later, they’ll find him. And then they’ll _know_.” Her voice breaks as she contemplates that terrible turn of events.

“No,” Hermione insists, taking Harry’s hands in hers and squeezing, “no they won’t. Not if we take it out first. They’ll never find him if they don’t have the 1945 yearbook.”

“It might already be too late,” Harry whispered, but despite herself, she felt a minute strand of hope snake into her mind.

“Then we go now,” Ron said frankly, and took her free hand and dragged her toward the portrait hole, Hermione following on behind them. As they stepped out into the corridor, Harry felt a bit silly holding hands with her friends, but not silly enough to disentangle herself.

Every step Harry took closer to the library, she found herself cooking up a thousand different ways that the book could already be gone. Slytherins were known for being cunning, what if they’d already put the pieces together? What if any moment they figured out that before he was Lord Voldemort, her soulmate had been a boy called Tom Riddle? What would happen then? Would she be kicked out of Hogwarts, shunned by her peers, torn apart in the tabloids?

Ron and Hermione wouldn’t abandon her, she knew. But they were the only ones she was sure of. Because everyone else - everyone else thought that they knew her, knew exactly who and what she was. Being the soulmate of Dark Lord did not fit into the image of Harriet Potter most people had.

They wouldn’t care that she had no choice, that he had killed her parents. They’d think she was destined to go dark, if she wasn’t already there. They’d experiment on her, to see the hows and whys of their bond - and there was something strange about it, Harry knew that much. The largest recorded age difference between soulmates had been twenty three years, and that had been a one-off somewhere in Iceland. A fifty four year gap was unheard of. Unthinkable. And that wasn’t even mentioning the way her scar burned around him like it was _alive_. None of it should have happened. None of it should have been possible.

But here she was.

Before Harry knew it, Ron and Hermione were guiding her into the library, and marching toward the yearbook section. For a moment, Harry wanted to close her eyes, wanted not to see a gap in the shelf, but then-

Every single book was still there.

She let out a slightly hysterical laugh of relief, uncaring of Madam Pince’s _shh_ that would usually scare her half to death. She could even see the writing - _Class of 1945 -_ written in embossed golden lettering across the spine of the book.

Hermione strode forward and scooped it up without a word, before marching to the front desk, for once not tempted to stop and browse as she passed by all the different bookshelves. “See?” Ron said with a small grin, squeezing her arm, “Nobody will find out.”

For the first time since she had heard the Slytherins were looking for Tom Riddle, she managed to smile back.

* * *

They have the yearbook for two weeks, officially. Harry knows that they can’t keep it forever - Madam Pince is a terrifying woman on a good day, but when library books were overdue… she had reduced several students to tears. Even seventh years.

Ron had been throwing out ideas of how to get rid of the page - spelling it blank, magically altering the paper - but Hermione had just rolled her eyes and, without any warning, ripped the entire page out of the book. Ron and Harry gaped at her, open-mouthed. “Hermione,” Ron had stuttered, “that’s… you just… that’s a _library book!”_

“I’d noticed,” Hermione said dryly, before peeling away the remaining scraps of paper carefully so it wasn’t obvious that there was a page missing. “It won’t hold up under any real scrutiny,” she said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, “but if someone is just flipping through, looking for a familiar face? They won’t notice the page numbers don’t match up.”

“We could just spell it-” Ron said, biting his lip, “to make doubly sure.”

“Library books can’t be charmed, Ron,” Hermione said in a lecturing tone, “otherwise, we could have just swapped out the picture or rearranged the page numbers. All the books are protected from magical means of altering. That’s why last year I had to write, physically write, on the grimoire about the Basilisk moving through the pipes, and why people even take books out at all, instead of duplicating them themselves. Only Madam Pince can alter any of the books magically. Muggle means, however, are... overlooked.”

Ron nodded mutely, apparently having given up on getting a word in edgeways when his soulmate was on a tangent.

Apparently satisfied with the tidiness of the paper, she closed the book, and held up the large page with _HEAD BOY_ written across the top. Tom Riddle smiled out at them, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “What do you want to do with this?” After a moment, Harry realised the question was directed at her.

“Get rid of it,” she said, forcing herself to look away from his too-beautiful face. That boy was dead, she told herself. She had killed him. She had destroyed him. _(Harriet! Please!)_ Hermione nodded, and with no further ado, tore the page in half. The photograph silently screamed as he was ripped in half.

 _You deserve this,_ Harry thought, and then all of a sudden she felt very ashamed of herself. It was a photograph. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t him. _She_ wasn’t him. She didn’t enjoy watching people suffer.

“Give it here,” she said, and held out her hand. To her credit, Hermione didn’t hesitate even though Harry’s hand shook as she passed over the torn pieces of parchment. The black and white photograph was still screaming soundlessly.

Harry took one last, long look before balling both halves of Tom Riddle’s face into her fist, and throwing them in the fire. She kept on looking until the picture had completely blackened, and there was no evidence that there had ever been anything there in the first place. Ron snorted something that sounded like _good riddance_ and Harry agreed.

It was a trick of the mind, her thinking that her wrist had burned for a second as she’d tossed the photograph into the grate.

* * *

“So how are we doing this?” Harry asks nervously, tapping her feet against the legs of her stool.

“The book says first off we need to concentrate on our magic,” Hermione replies, her finger underlying the relevant passage in the tome, “and try and contain it in one area.”

It took about four minutes of this before Ron let out a grumpy sigh. Hermione glares at him after cracking open an eye. “What?” He says, raising his hands, “I didn’t say anything!”

“You were thinking too loud,” Hermione snapped, before giving in and opening her eyes properly. “I haven’t felt anything.”

“Me either,” Harry agreed, and Ron seconded her.

Hermione’s lips rugged down at the sides as she skimmed the book again. “Maybe the book is right,” she said pessimistically, “perhaps we’re just too young to learn this kind of this. Our magic might not be mature enough-“

“That’s not it,” Ron cut in. He ignored Hermione’s look. “It’s a myth. Dad told me. That wizards have magical cores that grow as you get older. It’s not true. A baby’s magic is exactly the same strength as it would be for an adult. The difference between juvenile magic and adult magic is the control you have over it. The more control you have, the more you can access. You can have the best control in the world and still not be Dumbledore.”

Hermione bit her lip. “If not that, then what?”

“Maybe we need to, you know, _try_ the spell first,” Harry said with a raised eyebrow, “So we know where we’re at with it?”

“Oh, right. Good idea.”

* * *

“What with S.P.E.W starting up again soon, we can’t really use this classroom for our study group anymore,” Hermione said after yet another lunchtime spent in the abandoned classroom that they had claimed the year before, trying to cast the Patronus charm, “because anyone could walk in and see what we’re doing.”

“We’re not exactly doing _much,”_ Ron said sullenly, and Harry nodded in agreement.

“He’s right, Mione,” Harry said to her best friend with a shrug, “none of us have even managed anything past a few silvery wisps. And it’s not like we aren’t allowed to study on our own.”

“We’re not allowed to _practice_ on our own though,” Hermione countered, “especially not with such advanced spellwork.”

“You said it wasn’t that advanced before,” Ron grumbled, looking at his wand as if it had betrayed him. Harry thought that was a little bit unfair. The new wand had been a huge help for Ron - he described the ease with which he could cast now as like flying to hiking up a mountain with his old wand. As such, his grades had all received a boost of at least a grade, with the sole exception of Potions, where wands weren’t required and Ron was as likely as any Gryffindor to attract Snape’s ire, with the sole exception of Harry, who he alternated between attacking relentlessly or completely ignoring depending on the day. The Patronus charm was the first spell he hadn’t been able to cast after a couple of tries with his new wand.

“It’s not!” Hermione said, before sighing, “We can do this, I _know_ we can. But we need to be able to keep practicing, and we can’t risk being caught in here by S.P.E.W members.”

“There aren’t any other vacant classrooms,” Ron said, “we checked when we found out this one had spiders in, remember?”

Harry did vaguely remember checking rest of the floor for another spare classroom the year before, but what had really stuck in her mind was the way Ron had immediately sprinted out of the room after reaching at a note least two octaves higher than usual when he had spotted an absolutely miniscule arachnid in a corner. Harry had almost told him about how the spiders used to be her friends in her cupboard, before deciding that probably wouldn’t help. He had only come back in after Hermione had personally scoured every corner of the place from top to bottom, and Harry had squashed them, because Hermione refused because it wasn’t _their_ fault they were spiders, and wanted to release them, something Ron evidently disagreed with by the squeak that escaped his mouth. Harry, not eager to get into yet another ethical debate with her bookish friend, had decided just to get it out of the way so that Ron would come back from the other end of the corridor as quickly as possible. The most ridiculous part was that the spiders probably would have disappeared themselves soon enough thanks to the Basilisk’s presence, although they hadn’t known that at the time.

Despite herself, her mouth twitched. As much as the memory was tinged with worry for Ron and annoyance at Hermione for her moral quandaries, it was funny in hindsight. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She had discovered pretty quickly that no matter how she scoured her mind, all of her happy memories were tinged with sadness. Going to Diagon Alley for the first time - and learning that her parent’s murderer was her soulmate. Making her first friend - after Hermione had been crying, alone and abandoned, on the Hogwarts Express. Ron and Hermione making up and becoming friends - but only after nearly dying together when facing the troll. Seeing her family in the Mirror of Erised - when in reality, they were all dead. Hermione and Ron waiting by her bedside after going after the stone - but the entire experience had been overshadowed by her encounter with Voldemort. Ron and Hermione waking up from their petrification - something that had almost destroyed her. Over and over, every happy memory that came to mind seemed to be tainted with the tragedy that was her life.

The only memory that seemed to produce more than a splutter of silver sparks was, ironically, the one that she would have assumed was most twisted of all. Her and Myrtle, locked in a screaming match as the water rose and rose around them, oblivious to Snape banging on the doors outside. No, _that_ wasn’t the part that made her happy - what made her happy was remembering the way the tear had finally slipped down her cheek, hot and salty, and the overwhelming relief she felt that she could still cry. That she wasn’t as much of a monster as she could have been.

 _Maybe I am dark,_ Harry thinks with a pall of dread, _maybe I am dark, if the closest thing I have to a happy memory is after reducing an innocent girl to tears, reducing my_ friend _to tears, in the very place she was murdered, the only place she feels safe-_

She stops dead, having tuned out Ron and Hermione’s good-natured bickering about the exact level of difficulty the Patronus Charm was which has slowly turned back to the problem of finding a new study space, as an idea springs into her mind. She knows exactly where they can practice.

* * *

“And you’re _sure_ the chamber is sealed?”

It was the third time that Hermione had asked that question, but Harry couldn’t exactly blame her considering she was a muggleborn who had almost died the year before thanks to the Basilisk.

“Yes, Mione,” She said patiently, “I promise you, I watched as Snape and the Aurors went down there, killed the Basilisk with roosters, then came back up and filled the whole place up with rocks before having me close the sink up. Nothing is getting in or out ever again.”

Hermione was the only one she was addressing, as Ron was refusing to enter the Myrtle’s bathroom, but she made certain to speak loudly so that he’d be able to hear out in the corridor. “But it’s a girl’s toilet!” He had protested, face as red as his hair as he stammered. He did it again as soon as Harry had finished talking.

“Nobody ever goes in here,” Harry yelled back, “and that was _before_ they knew that this was the entrance to the chamber!”

Reluctantly, Ron poked his head inside the toilet. Harry wasn’t sure what he was expecting, exactly, but he looked a little less daunted when it turned out that the girl’s toilets were in fact pretty much identical to the boy’s. Drawing on his Gryffindor courage, he stepped inside smartly, after looking one last time into the corridor to check he wasn’t being watched. At Harry’s bemused expression, he crossed his arms defensively. “If Percy or the twins knew I was in here…” he trailed off, clearly overcome by the very thought.

“And you’re sure that-” Hermione mimicked her soulmate’s action then, looking left and right nervously before lowering her voice, “that _Myrtle_ won’t mind?”

“Myrtle won’t mind _what?_ ”

Hermione started. Ron jumped about two inches off the floor. Harry was the only one out of the three of them not to react to Myrtle’s familiar voice rang through the bathroom, although in fairness, she had been forewarned. This had been Myrtle’s main condition for them using the bathroom - she wanted to enact her own special kind of hazing against the two newcomers. Harry knew Ron and Hermione could handle it, so she agreed.

(“It’s only because they’re your friends,” Myrtle had decreed when asked for her conditions to their using the bathroom, “I won’t have anyone else in here, it’s still _my_ toilet after all.”

Harry agreed easily, as she doubted there was any danger of that.)

“Us studying in here,” Harry said, fighting to keep her face blank and looking over expectantly towards Myrtle’s favoured cubicle, playing to Ron and Hermione as an audience. It wasn’t _really_ lying, after all. They would draw their own conclusions. And Myrtle could have her fun, so everybody won. Harry got to keep her secrets, Myrtle could play the scary ghost for once in a castle filled by older spirits which had hundreds (if not thousands) of years experience on her, and Ron and Hermione got to use the bathroom. It was the perfect compromise, even if Ron and Hermione weren’t entirely aware that they were part of any sort of deal. The undead teenager phased through the door with a characteristic eye roll.

“You want to study in a toilet? In _my_ toilet?” Myrtle said flatly. She floated just above the ground, so that she was of a height with Ron, although Harry knew that if she had hovered at floor level, she’d only be a hairsbreadth taller than Hermione. Unlike everyone else from before the summer break, Harry found it slightly comforting that Myrtle hadn’t grown or slimmed down or done her hair differently. Everybody seemed to be changing much too quickly for Harry’s taste.

There was a reason for that, of course. Myrtle was a ghost. She would always look exactly the same as she did the day that she died. Forever.

Hermione began to stammer, so Harry rescued her. “We wouldn’t ask if we didn’t really need to,” she says, trying to communicate silently with only her eyebrows to Myrtle that she was doing great, “we wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

She sneaked a look at Ron and Hermione out of the corner of her eye. They seemed to buy it, but she couldn’t be sure, as they were both transfixed by Myrtle, who was now rather striking with her newfound confidence. This time last year, Harry knows she would have thrown a tantrum if someone had even mistakenly ventured into her toilet for a quick wee, let alone purposefully wanting to turn it into a study room.

To Harry’s shock, Ron is the first of her friends to recover. “We wouldn’t be here all the time,” he says quickly, “you’d still have your privacy. We just need to have a place where people can’t walk in on us.”

Harry blinks, and Myrtle is across the room, nose to nose with Ron. “Are you breaking the rules?” She asks curiously. Harry got the strangest feeling of deja vu. _Was somebody being mean to you?_

Ron sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. “Kind of, yeah.”

Myrtle spends a moment or two looking imposing, before grinning widely, all teeth. “That’s alright then!” And with that, she flew back down into the U-bend with a whoop.

“I thought you said she was- well, grumpy? Moping? Moaning?” Ron says out the side of his mouth to the girls.

“She _was_ ,” Hermione replies, her eyebrows raised so high they disappear into her hairline.

* * *

There are pros and cons to the Quidditch season starting up again.

The pros vastly outnumber the cons; flying, seeing all her friends on the team again, preparing for the matches, the way everyone in Gryffindor grins at her not because she’s _Harriet Potter,_ but because she’s the Seeker _,_ the best they’ve had since Charlie Weasley. Ron and Hermione coming out in the mornings even though they’re not part of the team to cheer her on, the promised house points that are synonymous with victory, even the glares from the Slytherin team across the hall as they troop in from morning practice.

The cons come down to one thing that very nearly equal all the pros; this is Oliver’s last year in Hogwarts. His last year as Quidditch captain. And thus, his very last chance to win the cup.

Harry had thought Oliver had gone overboard last year.

Oliver is a good guy, all things considered - he's friendly, helpful, funny and kind. But Harry forgot how much she usually liked Oliver after three consecutive practices in rain, and the last one being interspersed with hail as well. Just for the variety.

When Angelina had dared question their glorious leader, his eyes had narrowed into thin slits. “Quidditch does not wait for the weather!” He had bellowed, fist in the air like he was giving some impassioned political speech, “Quidditch waits for no man!” A glare from his three chasers caused him to add, “Or woman!”

Harry would have glared at him as well, but she was too busy trying to wipe off her glasses fast enough to see out of them.

“Quidditch does however wait for large, man-eating snakes!” George added with a grin. “And the petrifications of minors!”

That had been a mistake. Reminding Oliver of how all Quidditch matches had been suspended at the end of last year, leaving the Quidditch cup automatically to the previous years winners (Slytherin, to add insult to injury, despite the fact they had been bottom in the rankings due to the normal team’s year long ban for the bludger incident) had put him in a black mood, which he then took out on them with an extra set of speed runs. Even George’s identical twin and soulmate, Fred, was glaring at the beater when they finally made their way back to the changing rooms.

“I just wanted him to see he was being a little short-sighted,” the fifth year whined, “it’s not like the games weren’t cancelled for a good reason. Our little brother was petrified!”

“This is _Oliver Wood_ we’re talking about,” Alicia reminded the troublemaker, “ _Oliver Wood._ He wouldn’t care if half the student body was petrified as long as Quidditch could go on. As it is, it’s his NEWT year, and he’s spending all his time on Quidditch already. Do not underestimate the Quidditch madness. Just keep your head down, and muddle through. He’ll calm down once we’ve won a match.” She bit her lip. “Probably.”

* * *

The first match of year turns out to be against Hufflepuff. Most captains would be pleased that their team wouldn’t be put up against the toughest competitor right away (which was, Harry reluctantly had to admit, the Slytherins), but Wood seems to see no difference in their competitor’s level of skill, so he still has them up at the crack of dawn going through drills.

As exhausting as it is, it does leave the Gryffindor in better overall condition than the Hufflepuffs, which helps no end when the day of the match dawns, and the weather is beyond miserable. Wood says it’s just a little rain; what it actually is is fifty mile per hour winds, sleet and fog. Alicia takes pity on Harry, who doesn’t know any warming charms, and enchants her quidditch uniform to heat up when she was in the air.

The air is freezing cold, and Harry is already half frozen by the time she is sitting in midair. The Hufflepuff seeker, Cedric, who she’d met at the train station the year before, is almost vibrating from the force of his shivers. She tries to yell at him over the roaring wind to use a warming charm, fairly certain he knew how to cast one as he was a prefect, but her voice is lost in the gale. Madam Hooch has to blow her whistle twice, because the first time she blew it it had stayed silent thanks to the internal mechanism freezing up.

In bad weather, there was no desire to stretch the game out, so Oliver signalled for the team to undertake their fastest plays. Harry was looking out for the snitch from the off, but her glasses and goggles kept on misting over and she could barely see five foot in front of her face. Below her, she could see shapes moving that had to be the rest of the teams, but she couldn’t even tell what colour their jerseys were. She shivered again. Despite Alicia’s spellwork, she could feel the cold seeping into her bones.

She sharply pulled her broom up as the screams of the crowds grew louder. She must have gone too close to the stands. But as she turned her broom back around, something struck her as odd about the screams. Instead of a mass of cheers and roars for Gryffindor or Hufflepuff specifically, there was just the one shriek, and it was as loud as a thunderclap, reverberating in her head.

The scream seemed never ending, no matter how Harry backed away. In desperation to escape the terrible noise, she flew higher, even as her body protested breathing the frozen, thin air, but still the scream carried on.

_“Not Harry- please, not Harry-”_

“Stand aside you silly girl… stand aside now…” (She knows that voice. She knows that voice. How, how does she know that voice?)

_“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-”_

Numbing, swirling white mist was filling Harry’s brain... What was she doing? Why was she flying when that woman was screaming? She needed to help her... She needed to help her or she was going to die- no, she was going to be _murdered-_

She was falling, falling through the icy mist. A shrill voice was laughing, high and cold and cruel, the woman was screaming, screaming, and then she wasn’t. And then she wasn’t.

All at once, there is silence. Harry tries to open her eyes and finds them almost glued together, her hands and feet feeling like they’ve been wrapped in cotton wool as she wiggles her toes and fingers to make sure nothing is broken. She succeeds, although the effort makes muscles she didn’t even know she had ache, and a low moan slips out.

“Harry? Harry!” Hermione’s voice drags her out of her semi-consciousness and into awareness. With great effort, she opens her eyes but the world swims.

 _What’s going on?_ She tries to say, but what comes out is “Ngggh.”

She tried to think back, and only succeeded in giving herself a headache. She didn’t have a clue where she was, or how she got there. All she knew was that every inch of her was aching as though it had been beaten with Petunia’s wooden spoon.

“Thank Merlin, that was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Ron is saying - and it is Ron, she would know that mop of bright red hair anywhere, even as a fuzzy blob - before he makes an exclamation and reaches towards her with something in his hands. Before she can automatically flinch away, her glasses are perched on her nose again and the world comes into focus.

_Scariest… the scariest thing… the hooded black figures… the cold… the woman, screaming…_

She lets out a shuddering breath. She’s lying in the hospital wing, with a drenched Ron and Hermione at one side of her and a muddied Gryffindor Quidditch team on the other. She looks around, heart in her mouth, but the hospital wing is silent of screams and devoid of dementors.

“Harry!” said Fred, who looked as white as a bedsheet underneath the generous coating of mud, “How’re you feeling?”

_The lightning- the dementors- the scream-_

_Voldemort._

“What happened?” She asked, sitting up so suddenly that they all gasped. On her right side Ron and Hermione moved at the same moment to steady her, and did so just in time - her head spun at the quick movement and black spots danced across her vision.

“You- you fell,” said George, looking just as pale as his twin, “It must’ve been from fifty feet, easy.”

“We thought you _died.”_ Alicia said, and to Harry’s horror she saw that the Chaser was trembling. Hermione made a small, squeaky noise at her side, and her eyes were red and bloodshot.

“I-” Harry licked her lips, a thousand thoughts battling to be realised, “the match,” she settled on, knowing it was a weak distraction, “What happened? Are we doing a replay?”

No one spoke. That answered her question, but she had to be sure, had to confirm _-_

“We didn’t- _lose?”_

“Diggory got the snitch,” said George, trying to smile at her but the expression looking off on his unusually somber face, “just after you fell. He didn’t realise what had happened until after. When he looked back and saw you on the ground, he tried to call it off, wanted a rematch. But they won, fair and square… even Wood admits it.”

“Where is Wood?” Harry asked, chest tight. The Keeper was noticeably absent.

“Still in the showers,” Fred told her, “We think he’d trying to drown himself.”

Angelina reaches out and smacks him around the head as Harry pitches forward and put her face to her knees and gripped at the roots of her hair. Katie reaches forward and puts a gentle hand on Harry’s shoulder, “It’s one game, Harry. To have never have missed the snitch in three years is amazing, frankly.”

George copies her gesture, but instead shakes Harry’s remaining shoulder roughly as if trying to jolt her out of a trance. It helps a bit, even as Ron and Hermione send him identical glares. “There had to be one time you didn’t get it. And I mean, dementors on the pitch? Nobody blames you. You’re still the best Seeker we’ve ever had, and I include Charlie in that count.”

“And it’s not over yet,” Fred said, still rubbing the back of his head, “We only lost by a hundred points, right?” Harry lets out a low moan at the reminder. “Hey, no- if Hufflepuff loses to Ravenclaw and we beat Ravenclaw and Slytherin-”

“Hufflepuff will have to lose by at least two hundred points,” George points out, but there’s a thread of hope in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“But if they beat Ravenclaw…” Fred countered.

“No way,” Alicia cut in, “Ravenclaw’s too good. But if Slytherin loses to Hufflepuff-”

“It all depends on the points,” Angelina said slowly, “If there’s a margin of a hundred either way-”

Harry slowly uncurled from her ball, not saying a word. They had lost, and it was her fault. She looked despondently over at Ron and Hermione who had remained quiet as the team grew more and more rowdy, and reached for them. Hermione took her hand, and Ron squeezed her shoulder. Madam Pomfrey came over and herded the Quidditch team out for being too loud, and the ghost of a smile twitched at the sides of Harry’s lips as she saw the trail of mud they left behind them.

“Dumbledore was really angry,” Hermione says in a low, quaking voice, “I’ve never seen him like that before. He slowed your fall, and I think he used _expecto patronum_ on the Dementors- something silver he shot at them got them out of the stadium immediately. We heard him-”

“You were so still, mate,” Ron said, cutting off Hermione’s increasingly hysterical voice, “he put you on a stretcher and sent you up to the castle right away. Everyone thought…”

He trails off. Harry wonders if they thought she was dead or Kissed, and which they’d consider to be worse.

_No, please, not Harry, take me, kill me-_

“Did someone get my Nimbus?” She unsubtly changes the subject, and somehow Ron and Hermione look even more strained. “...what? What happened?”

Hermione pressed her lips into a white line. “It’s- it’s gone, Harry.”

“G-gone?”

“It had a fight with the Whomping Willow,” Ron said tightly, “The Whomping Willow won.”

Harry’s throat closed up as Hermione reached down for a bag at her feet that Harry hadn’t really seen before that moment and turned it upside down, tipping a dozen pieces of splintered wood and twig onto the bed, the only remains of Harry’s faithful, finally beaten broomstick.

* * *

McGonagall spends five minutes examining Harry’s permission slip. She squints at it, casts various spells that make it glow red and green, and finally looks up at Harry with a displeased expression on her face. “Miss Potter,” she says in a voice that she usually reserves for answering a particularly stupid question in class, “I _strongly_ advise you do not go to Hogsmeade in light of the situation.”

The situation, Harry knows, is the fact that Sirius Black is still at large, but McGonagall doesn’t want to say that, because Harry isn’t supposed to know he’s looking for her. She’s getting better at reading inbetween the lines of what adults say, and what they don’t say, and what they actually mean.

What Harry understands from the words _strongly advise_ is that McGonagall cannot outright bar her from going because of Aunt Petunia’s signature. The urge to be a good girl, to go away inside and duck her head and agree is still there, but is overridden by relief that she can still go. “I’ll keep that in mind, professor.”

She can feel McGonagall’s reproachful stare on her back as she hurries over to where Ron and Hermione are standing, both their slips having been barely glanced at before they were waved on. “I thought she was going to set it on fire at one point,” Ron said in a low voice as they made towards the gates, “I could see her wand hand twitching and everything.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to resort to forgery,” Harry replies in an equally quiet voice, “she certainly was looking for it. Did you recognise those spells, Mione?”

Hermione was gnawing at her lip, and didn’t reply for a moment. When she realised both Harry and Ron were looking at her, two spots of colour blossomed on her cheeks. “I was just thinking,” she says, and Ron groaned. She shot him a look. “I was just _thinking_ ,” she says again, raising an eyebrow to dare her soulmate to react, “that if McGonagall is so worried, perhaps we should all just stay in Hogwarts until Black is caught-”

“And miss the first Hogsmeade weekend?” Ron says, sounding very unimpressed, “No, no, no. That’s letting him win, isn’t it? So we’re going to go to Hogsmeade, where _nothing is going to happen,_ and eat sweets until we’re sick, and have fun. We deserve to have some fun, Mione. We’ve been spending pretty much every minute of our free time working on the Patronus charm. My foot is _down_.”

To emphasise this, he jumps instead of stepping forward so that he impacts on the fresh snow with a satisfying _crunch._ Hermione rolls her eyes, but smiles, and Harry knows that she’s convinced.

“So where to first?” Harry says as they focus on not falling down the snow covered hill to the little village. She has been to Hogsmeade before, at the very beginning of second year when half the students had to floo in because Dobby tampered with the platform entrance, but she hadn’t exactly had a chance to look around.

Ron, however, has five older brothers, and has been hearing about Hogsmeade for years. “Right,” he says, “there’s a lot of shops - there’s Zonko’s Joke Shop, which Fred and George like for obvious reasons, there’s Honeydukes Sweet Shop, which _everyone_ likes, Charlie always raved about Spintwitches’ Sporting Needs, and Percy waxes poetic about Scrolls and Tomes, which I guess Hermione will love-”

Harry loses herself in his monologue, and grins to herself as the picturesque hamlet comes into view. The houses looked like they could be made of gingerbread, and all the signs creaked above the stores welcomingly. She notices the place that she floo’ed into last year is called 'The Hog's Head’, and she wonders if it’s a pub, and if they’d be able to go in despite only being thirteen. In the muggle world, you could only enter a pub with an adult if you were under eighteen, and couldn’t approach the bar. Harry knew this from the rare occasions when she’d been taken along on a Dursley family outing because Mrs Figg wasn’t available, for some reason, and she’d been told to wait outside various pubs whilst Vernon and Petunia went in with Dudley. They could have taken her in, but why would they? She’d sometimes spent hours out there if they had a pub lunch, or if there was a rugby match being televised.

She shakes the thought away. She’s with Ron and Hermione, and she knows they wouldn’t leave her. “Can we go to Honeydukes?” She asks, and Ron grins at her. Hermione, the daughter of two dentists, makes a show of looking reluctant, but follows them in all the same and quickly starts looking longingly at the rock candy.

Harry rolls her eyes and buys some for her and gives it to her as soon as they exit the shop. “I can’t-” Hermione said, but she was already tearing off the packaging.

“You didn’t buy it,” Harry reminds her as the girl closes her eyes in bliss as she sucks on the sugary treat, “therefore, you’ve kept your promise to your parents not to buy any sweets.”

Hermione looks like she wants to be torn over the deception, but then her hunger wins out, and she pops a piece of strawberry flavoured goodness into her mouth. Ron takes that as permission to rip open his chocolate frog, and he lets out a whoop at the card inside. “Agrippa!” He cries, victorious, and Harry rolls her eyes as she picks out a non-threatening looking Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Bean. She had been hoping for raspberry; she gets ketchup instead. At least it wasn’t blood like Seamus says he once got.

Predictably, their next stop is Tomes and Scrolls, and Harry can tell by the way Hermione begins lovingly stroking the spines of the books that they’ll be in here for a good while. Ron, to his credit, lasts a full twenty minutes before announcing he’s going to Spintwitches’. “You coming?” He asks Harry, and she goes to agree, when Hermione shoots her a _look,_ and Harry shakes her head instead.

Hermione takes another half-hour to pick out three books, which is all that she can afford with the Hogsmeade allowance that her parents gave her. They are, however, all very thick, so Harry thinks they might just last her until the next Hogsmeade outing, if she rations herself. (She won’t.) “And now,” Hermione says ominously as they exit the store, “we need to go to Gladrags.”

Harry knew this was coming, but she still sulks all the way there. To her relief, there are only a couple of upper years inside - she can’t imagine the embarrassment of having to ask about underwear if anyone she knew was in the shop. Hermione has no such compunction, and marches up the shop assistant without any hesitation, leaving Harry to scurry behind her nervously. “We need bra adjustments and feminine hygiene products, please,” Hermione says, without even lowering her volume, and Harry’s face burns scarlet as she shoots a glance at the older girls in the shop. Thankfully, they don’t seem to have noticed.

Taking in Harry’s beetroot complexion and Hermione’s steely determination, the witch quickly ushers them into another section of the shop. “Right girls,” she says, rubbing her hands together as if anticipating a challenge, “let’s get started.”

The process isn’t as painful as Harry had half been expecting it to be, but it’s still not exactly a _fun_ shopping trip. The enchanted tape measures at least mean that the witch doesn’t need to come close to her, but she still feels very exposed as she strips down to her underwear. Wizarding culture obviously has far fewer objections to getting undressed in public, as there isn’t even a recourse for a dressing room, and Lavender and Parvati never bothering to get changed in the bathroom or even behind their bed-curtains. At least, she comforts herself, the shop assistant will have seen it all before, and Hermione is here and going through the same thing.

She can’t help but notice, however, that Hermione’s body looks different to hers. Where Harry is all pointy bones and a dark T-shirt tan from gardening at the Dursley’s, Hermione’s skin is porcelain, creamy, and her hips flare out ever so slightly at the waist. They usually change in the privacy of the bathroom, both of them from muggle families with muggle sensibilities, so Harry hasn’t ever seen her friend like this before. She’s glad she hasn’t, to be honest. It makes something ugly twist in her gut.

_...like a stick insect she is - when I was her age, I already had hips, meat on my bones. It comes from not having the right genes, you know - born all weak and spindly. No strength to her…_

“All done!” The witch measuring them trills, and Harry pulls on her clothes with surprisingly steady hands. Hermione looks completely unaffected by the process; instead, she’s beaming, her hands already filled with various magicked garments, and Harry pushes away Marge’s echoing voice, her own stupid insecurities. This is _Hermione,_ her best friend, her first friend. They’re a team. There’s nothing to be jealous of.

(That last part is a lie.)

* * *

“Do you think Ron’ll still be in Spintwitches’?” Hermione asks Harry as they walk out of Gladrags, their purchases shrunk and stuffed into their pockets to avoid anyone so much as guessing what they’d gone to buy.

“Probably,” Harry says, “I heard that there’s a Firebolt in there, and if I know Ron at all-”

A high pitched, strangely familiar scream cuts her off. Harry and Hermione exchange a look, and as one pick up their pace to reach the source of the sound, which quickly becomes apparent as they draw near. From behind, Lavender looks like a bundle of pink wool and white pom-poms, leaning heavily on Parvati who stands at her side.

As she gets closer to the two girls, Harry can hear Parvati muttering soft reassurances, but her eyes bely confusion and no small amount of fear. She looks desperately at Hermione, who answers her silent plea by reaching forward to give Lavender’s forearm a gentle squeeze. “Lavender?” Hermione asks in a patient, cautious voice that Hagrid might use to calm down an angry hippogriff, “Are you alright?”

The blonde girl shakes her head, and Harry can see now as she stands at Hermione’s side that her large blue eyes are filled with unshed tears.

“Lav, what happened? _”_ Parvati asks, and Harry swallows, a feeling of foreboding curling in her gut.

“I- I saw…” Lavender’s bottom lip wobbles, “I saw _the Grim.”_

Harry’s first instinct is to deflate with relief. The Grim is nothing more than a wizarding superstition, not unlike muggles and black cats, and Lavender and Parvati see omens in everything since they began studying them in Divination.

Parvati goes pale. “T-The Grim?” She repeats. Lavender lets out a hoarse sob. Hermione bites her lip, clearly unsure whether or not to say anything.

“Lavender, you probably just saw a big dog,” Harry tells her in what she hopes is a soothing voice, “it probably belongs to somebody in the village-”

But Lavender was already resolutely shaking her head. “ _No.”_ She insists, her tone laced with urgency, her eyes wide, “I saw _the Grim._ I know I did. And now you’re here and-” She clapped her hands over her mouth as her eyes widened, “You had a grim in your tea.” She recalls in a whispered voice.

Harry fights down an eye roll, knowing that wouldn’t help calm Lavender at all. “That was weeks ago,” Harry reminds her, already knowing she was fighting a losing bottle as she tried to reason with her roommate, “I’m telling you, Lavender. Not every big black dog is an omen of death.”

“This one was,” Lavender says, and Harry would be annoyed with her if she wasn’t so clearly terrified. Her hands are shaking terribly, and tears are coursing down her pink cheeks. “I’m telling you, I know what I saw. It was the grim, and now-”

She burst into a fresh bout of tears.

* * *

Lavender had calmed down some by the time they got back to the castle, but she refused to leave the girl’s dorm once she was there, even for dinner. Parvati ended up going down to the Great Hall to strategize with Harry and Hermione about how to calm her best friend down that evening. “If we don’t do anything, she’s going to be in a right state for _days_ ,” Parvati reasons, and Harry agrees with her.

As much as the other girl has grown on her over the past couple of years, Lavender is still best described as a drama queen, and if the three of them can’t calm her down then it could take days for her to do so on her own, longer if Trelawney finds out that Lavender saw ‘the Grim’ and encouraged her meltdown.

For all of their sakes, it was best to tackle the issue head on.

“Lavender, I promise you, it was a dog. If it was the Grim, somebody else would have seen it, the Grim is always seen by three people before it disappears. It was probably a stray that ran off when you screamed.”

“But what if it _wasn’t?”_ Lavender wails for what must be the fiftieth time, “What if I’m just living on borrowed time, what if-”

“Lavender, we are _all_ living on borrowed time.” Hermione said, “We’re humans, that’s what it is to be human. The odds of any of us dying anytime soon are significantly lower this year than they were last year when there was a Basilisk in the school petrifying people! But you coped with that just fine! If I remember correctly, you said it was a prank at first. Why has _this_ scared you so much more than that?”

Lavender dissolves in sobs, and Parvati glares at Hermione as she rubs her back. Personally, Harry is glad that Hermione is the one that said it first, as she was far more likely to bring out the big guns of her parents being murdered at twenty-one, which now that she thinks about it would have done the opposite of calm Lavender down.

“It’s-” Lavender seems to choke on her own words, her lip wobbling, “you don’t-”

And then she’s reaching for her wrist. None of them react soon enough, none of them actually think that Lavender is going to do what she does. It has been hammered into their psyche’s since birth that nobody, _nobody_ should see your words until you’ve met your soulmate. Only parents usually know their children’s words, and siblings, but sometimes not even then.

But she does it. Before any of them can think to stop her, Lavender pulls away her purple ribbon and bares her wrist, still sobbing. _Don’t cry, don’t cry, it will all be over soon._ The writing is even and simple and everything Lavender’s is not, with her curly letters and loveheart dots.

“Oh- _Lav-”_ Parvati is the first of them to speak, her voice breaking as she throws her arms around her best friend. Harry can’t help but stare. _Don’t cry, don’t cry, it will all be over soon._ And then- _then_ Harry understands.

“You weren’t afraid of being petrified,” Harry says slowly, “because you knew that somebody had to say that to you first, and you’d be unable to cry if you were-”

Despite herself, her eyes flicker over to Hermione who _had_ been petrified. Luckily, her muggleborn friend doesn’t notice - her eyes are focusing on some middle distance, and her bottom lip is white as she worries it with her teeth.

 _You’re afraid of the Grim because you’re afraid of a chance to hear those words,_ Harry completes her thought silently. Lavender’s words are almost as much of a death sentence as Harry’s own. Parvati was still trying to calm down Lavender, telling her in a low voice that it might be a bad choice of words, it might not be as bad as she thinks, it might not be _that,_ and Parvati’s still dancing around it, dancing around what they’re all thinking-

Lavender’s words sound like something you’d say to comfort somebody in pain, somebody who is about to die.

For some reason, Harry is transported back, back to first year, that very first night in the dorms when Ron was still a prat and Hermione was the only one of them to have met their soulmate. Lavender had asked her _was it awful?_ and Harry had taken her words as proof of Lavender delighting in drama and suffering.

Now, it seems very clear all of a sudden that Lavender had been looking for company in her misery.

Lavender showing the three of them her words had been brave. It had been one of the bravest things that Harry had ever seen. And Harry knew what she had to do.

“Lavender,” she says softly, scooting closer to the blonde girl and Parvati on the former’s bed. “I have something to show you, okay?”

The two girls look at her with equal confusion, but Hermione’s face fills with horrified understanding. “Harry, _no-”_ she starts, but Harry’s already untied her ribbon, terrified she’ll back out when she knows in her gut that she needs this, she needs to do this, she needs-

Because right now, Lavender is not a gossip and Parvati is not a chatterbox, they’re her friends, and she’s sick of hiding.

 _Avada Kedavra_ is just as horrifying as it always is.

Parvati is the first to react, whispering what Harry thinks is a prayer in her native tongue, her gaze fixed on the smooth script on Harry’s wrist. Lavender looks up at her with big, blue eyes, and launches herself at Harry with no warning. She doesn’t smell like her namesake, but instead strawberries and cream and nail polish, and Harry doesn’t realise that she’s started crying too until Lavender begins to rub her back.

It’s freeing, and it’s terrifying, and it’s _right._

Harry has never been so sure of anything in her life. There’s another weight at her back, an arm around her neck - Harry knows Hermione’s touch better than she knows her own, and she tries to smile through her tears. A fourth, dark head bends forward and completes the circle, and they’re all crying, all four of them. The tears are cleansing, are pure, are renewing and powerful and important. Lavender keeps her wrist bare as she puts it in the middle of the circle, where their knees knock together and their hair overlaps - blonde curls and brown frizz and black braids. Harry does the same, taking her hand and gripping it tight. Hermione is next - her words haven’t been covered for years now, but they’re still there, still important, still not quite what any little girl wants their soulmate to say to them ( _who asked you?_ Honestly, Harry could kill Ron for them, if he hadn’t already apologised to Hermione more times than she can count.)

Parvati’s wrist joins last, and with a start Harry sees that it is bare too. Lavender lets out of sob, Hermione an understanding hum, and Harry can think of nothing to do but take it and press her lips to the words which must have haunted Parvati for years. At least for Harry, she hadn’t known what _Avada Kedavra_ meant.

 _I’m sorry for the wait._ Parvati’s boggart had been herself, old and alone and unloved, and how can Harry blame her when these are the first words that Parvati’s other half will say to her?

“Soulmates _suck,”_ Harry chokes out, and they all let out hoarse, unexpected barks of laughter. As if her speaking has broken the barrier, everyone speaks at once.

“You can’t tell anyone about Harry’s words, you can’t-” Hermione begins, her concern clear in her voice.

“I know death is inevitable, I know, but I don’t want it like that-”

“My parents don’t know, in our culture the nurses cover it up without anyone reading it. The ribbon only comes unstuck when you’re old enough to understand that nobody should know-”

“-my mother cries whenever she thinks about it, she never spent that much time with me as a child because she was always preparing herself to lose me-”

“-Padma’s words are so simple - _I’m Terry -_ she never had to wonder, never had to wait, and I’m going to be waiting for so _long-”_

“-it’s not fair-”

“-it just isn’t _fair-”_

“-why did this have to happen to us? What did any of us do wrong to deserve-”

Harry goes to speak again, but finds her voice is gone. Her eyes go to Hermione on instinct, and they’re right to - Hermione has pulled away from their circle of misery, her wand in hand and her expression grim. Harry hadn’t even heard her incantation.

“None of this can go further than this room,” Hermione says soberly, the effect ruined by the tear tracks on her cheeks, “none of it. If Harry’s words are heard by the wrong people-” she seems to lose her own voice for a moment at the thought, and when she speaks again her hands are shaking, “she could die. Or worse, she could end up with _him._ Do you understand?”

Parvati looks down at her wrist, and nods. Lavender’s full lips are a straight, white line on her otherwise blotchy, tear-stained face. “I’m going to remove the spell now.”

A wave of her wand, and Harry feels a tightness in her throat that she’d barely even been aware of shift. “And I’ll never tell anyone yours,” she blurts out, afraid that Lavender and Parvati think she and Hermione are only protecting her words, “I swear, never.”

Parvati gives her a wobbly smile, “I know. We-” she looks at Lavender, and they do that thing where they speak without words before turning back to Harry, “we know.”

Hermione shakes her head. “That’s not good enough.”

Harry frowns at her best friend. “Hermione, of course-”

“You might not mean to tell,” Hermione talks over her, “but it might just slip out. One slip is all it takes.”

“Hermione, they said they’re not going to tell anyone, and I believe-”

And then Hermione is turning to her, her eyes flashing with frustration and fear. “And I want to believe them, I do! But this is your life, Harry. This is your _life._ Can you imagine what the Ministry would do, if they knew?”

Harry’s protests die in her throat, and she goes very cold. “So what do you want me to do?” she asks, hating how her voice is shaking. “I can’t take it back, I don’t want to-”

“There’s a binding.” Parvati says, her voice strangely sure. “It’s old Hindi magic, it works on the basis of an unbreakable vow but instead of death if you say something, it- it’s like a trade. I’ll keep this secret if you keep mine. If one person breaks it, the other person will know and will be able to share the other’s secret freely.” She pauses, “It’s better than obliviating us.”

“Obliv- _Hermione!_ ” Harry cries as she realises that Parvati’s eyes are fixed on Hermione, filled with knowing.

“Don’t you _Hermione_ me, Harriet Potter!” Hermione snaps at Harry’s admonishing expression, “You should know by now that I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Harry struggles for words, for something to say. She tries to ignore the large part of herself that is beyond touched by Hermione’s resolve.

“I’m in,” Lavender says hoarsely, wiping away the remaining tears off her face, “for Parvati’s secret spell. I don’t want to be obliviated, but I know that it’d be the only option other than this. I want to remember- I want to remember that you trusted me. I want to remember that we’re _friends_ and not just _friendly_.”

Harry feels traitorous tears rising in her eyes again, and she blinks them away hard.

Hermione nods, slowly. “Alright. Teach me the spell.”

In the end, the rest is pretty simple. It’s a spell Parvati has a lot of experience with - when she and Padma were little they’d make use of it all the time - _I won’t tell Baba that you cut off my dolly’s hair if you don’t tell him that it was me who ate the lollies -_ and Hermione’s ridiculously quick at picking it up and altering it to involve all four of them. There’s a bit of a halt when they realise they don’t have a secret for Hermione to trade, but she raises her chin and tells them without hesitation that McGonagall gave her a time turner to use at the beginning of the year so she could take multiple electives at once.

“Is _this_ how you knew about Pansy getting hurt in Care?” Harry asks, the puzzle slotting together in her mind now that she has the missing piece.

Hermione nods slowly. “I didn’t know it would be Pansy, I just heard a rumour when I was on my way to another class that someone had been mauled by a hippogriff in Hagrid’s third year class-”

“But- you said you couldn’t tell me! That you promised McGonagall nobody would know! Not even Ron!”

“It’s a secret of equal worth to all of yours,” Hermione tells her, “and this spell will only work that way. Plus… I hate lying to you, and it's even worse when you _know_ I’m lying. This way we don’t have to deal with that anymore. Parvati’s spell allows for discussion between the participants of the secrets as long as nobody else can hear, so this way we can talk about it in the evenings.”

“And we can make sure you don’t overwork yourself,” Lavender points out.

Hermione looks almost offended at the suggestion that she could burnout. “I’m not going to over-”

“Now you have a safety net,” Harry tells her, a smile twitching at the sides of her mouth at the expression on Hermione’s face.

“I regret this already,” the bushy haired girl says with no real bite, before putting her hand in the middle of the circle to begin the binding. Smiling harder than she thought possible, Harry placed her own hand on top of Hermione’s, which was covered by Lavender’s palm and finally by Parvati’s. Parvati and Hermione both said the incantation at the same time, because the magic had to stretch to four people instead of two, and Harry felt a jolt of painless lightning travel down her spine.

“That’s it?” Lavender asked, “It’s done?”

Parvati nodded, looking exceptionally pleased with herself. “It’s done.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at: [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com)


End file.
